


something rich and strange

by The_Watchers_Crown



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, In the words of one commenter 'Martin has a type and it is monsters', Other, mostly consensual bloodletting, revived as of September 8th, wholesome monster cuddling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:30:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Watchers_Crown/pseuds/The_Watchers_Crown
Summary: “What do you want?” Martin's voice betrays him by quavering.“To say hello,” it says.Martin doesn’t know what to say to this. “Hello?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have no justification for this fic. 
> 
> Title borrowed from The Tempest.

Something is watching him.

In the Archive, Martin knows, something is always watching him. Something ancient, wicked, unyielding. There’s the constant undercurrent of being…not spied on, exactly, but seen. Observed. _Witnessed._ The feeling is there, always there, at its worst when he’s recording statements in Jon’s stead, but there even when he’s reaching out to witnesses or combing through police records; anyway, he’s not recording now, and the sensation’s not the same, quite.

Martin glances over his shoulder, but there’s only Tim (slouched halfway down his chair, a book in his hands and his eyes shut), Melanie (glowering at her computer screen), Basira (considerably more intent on her book than Tim is on his), and Jon’s office door, shut tight. Jon’s there now, back in the Institute for the moment. Martin expects him to chase after some new lead any day, to disappear and leave Martin wringing his hands, worrying until he returns, and then worrying a bit more.

The point is, nobody’s looking at Martin.

As though Jon’s heard him thinking, the door swings open to reveal the Archivist, his face drawn and tense. Martin practically jumps out of his chair, already saying, “D’you need anything? I can get tea, or…” He trails off at the minute shake of Jon’s head.

“No, thank you, Martin,” Jon says, and then, “I’m going to lie down.”

Martin tries not to feel useless, and fails, and watches Jon maneuver around the desks and messily abandoned case files, into the document storage room. He’s not well. There’s more color in his face recently, and Martin dreads to think why that might be, but he’s just as often exhausted. Martin says, “Right, just let me know if there’s anything I can do for you, all right?” and Jon flicks his hand to acknowledge he’s heard.

Nobody else has moved during this exchange, beyond Melanie and Basira having looked up from their distractions. There’s pity on both of their faces. Martin pretends not to notice, dropping back into his chair and snatching up the police statement he was reading.

The sensation of being watched by something more is gone, leaving him with only the ordinary unsettling eyes of the Archive.

* * *

 

Martin is down the soup aisle the next time he notices—thinks he notices, feels it like a chill—somebody watching him. Eyes in his back. It’s different from the pinning, suffocating presence in the Archive. It’s probably his imagination, truth be told. It’s run rampant, more rampant than usual, since—

Well, everything. Prentiss. Gertrude. The monster in the tunnels. The monster _s_  in the tunnels. The one stretched out and crooning, growling for Jon, the one that killed Sasha; the one with the wrong, sharp hands and the painful laugh, the one that tucked him and Tim away in nonsense, impossible corridors until it was ready to let them out. (He doesn’t delude himself, doesn’t think for a second that they escaped through luck or ingenuity. It let them go. Maybe it was bored. He prefers not to speculate.)

There are monsters at home in the Institute, too. Whatever’s watching them and stopping them quitting. Elias. Jon? No, not Jon. He can’t stand to think that way.

As it turns out, his imagination is a bit weak in comparison to his reality.

He sets the can of creamy chicken noodle he’s been mulling over back on the shelf, and chances a look about the aisle. Empty, aside from himself and a little old lady who’s squinting down at a box of chicken broth and probably harmless. But there’s still that feeling.

Martin hurries out of the store.

* * *

It doesn’t stop, after that.

Eleven days pass by, and it doesn’t matter where he is: Martin senses something spying on him. On the train. Navigating through crowded streets. Fussing over Jon, who seems to have a new wound every time he comes in, and tolerates Martin’s constant attention. Balancing a full tray on the way from the Institute’s kitchenette to the Archive. Standing beneath the pounding heat of his shower; he doesn’t look, then, for whatever is watching.

He considers, and just as quickly discards the idea of telling Jon. It’s not that he thinks Jon wouldn’t believe him. They’ve all seen too much for him to fear that. But Jon has larger concerns, has to be focused on stopping the Unknowing. (And maybe Elias, after that.) This, just a feeling, isn’t worth bothering him over.

And then, more than a feeling, it becomes a presence.

Martin is alone in the Archive, Tim having gone home early with a headache, Basira upstairs scouring the library for whichever bit of esoteric catches her fancy, Melanie out on an extended lunch break, and Jon…Martin doesn’t know where Jon is, gone two days this time, maybe with Daisy. He’s working his way through a pile of soon-to-be-Discredited statements. It’s a waste of time, he knows it is, but he needs the useless, mindless distraction of it. He’s almost able to ignore the whisper-soft impression that he’s a great source of entertainment for something.

That is, until he hears rustling, like paper, like wind. The hair on the back of his neck stands up. It’s probably a draft, he tells himself, refusing to let his eyes slip from the statement of Lewis Earles, even when there’s the addition of footsteps, something falling off a desk and being replaced.

“Martin Blackwood,” someone says, slow and fascinated and amused. He knows the voice, but wishes he didn’t. Maybe, he thinks, just a hint desperately, maybe it’s a hallucination. The end result of his nerves building up. It sounded just the same the first time, in the tunnels. “Do you like it down here in the dark?”

The steps come to a stop in front of his desk. His hands flex on the sheaf of paper he holds, and his eyes lift up, and up, and up, and if he hadn’t known it from the voice, he would recognize it on sight. It’s visited his nightmares often enough, strolling leisurely toward him without a worry. (What would it ever have to worry about, with hands fit to slice anybody to ribbons?) It looks like an ordinary man, its hair all loose, golden waves, its face impassive and soft-cheeked; but the hands are still sharp and the smile uncanny. Martin opens his mouth, but all the words he might say stick hard in his throat.

It knows his name.

It’s still watching him, too, looking prepared to wait, perfectly patient, however long it might take for Martin’s mouth to remember the proper way to form words. His throat has gone dry. He forces a swallow and gropes for his glass of water. It feels like a silly thing to do, but it’s all he can manage. Its eyes follow the line of his throat as he gulps down half the glass. He doesn’t feel any better, but he says, “What do you want?” and his voice betrays him by quavering.

He doubts he could hide his fear from this thing, either way.

“To say hello,” it says.

Martin doesn’t know what to say to this. “Hello?”

“Hello,” it repeats. “You’re like Michael.” Its head cocks at a curious angle. It reminds him, quite inexplicably, of a crow, or of a cadaver.

“Michael,” Martin says cautiously. “That’s…that’s you, isn’t it?” He is nothing like this thing. He’s human, for starters. His eyes flick occasionally toward its hands, hung down by its sides.

“Yes.” It makes a thoughtful sound. “No. Michael was like you. Small. Powerless. Scared.” It pauses. “Inconsequential.” Its mouth twitches. “I’m much more than that.”

Martin might be insulted, if it were coming from anyone, any _thing_  else. None of it is wrong, anyway. He feels at his smallest in front of it, fully powerless and scared; inconsequential, that one he’s felt for seemingly ages, in the face of the Unknowing and what might follow, whether or not Jon is successful. “You said I’m like Michael.”

“Yes,” it says again. “He worked in this dreadful place of dust and bones too. The Eye’s little temple is terribly uninspired.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Martin is surprised by how much he’s holding himself together. He’d like to run, sprint from his desk and the Archive and the Institute, but his legs are shaking harder than his voice. “How am I like Michael?”

“You work with the Archivist,” it says, its eyes leaving him for just a moment, catching on the door to an empty office. It laughs. The sound sets his nerves on edge. Last time he heard that… “Always  _worrying_  over the Archivist. You shouldn’t, you know, he won’t do the same for you.”

Martin doesn’t say he knows that. “I don’t—I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“No?” Another laugh, and a shake of its head. “No, it isn’t. I have no reason at all to pay  _you_  any mind, Archival Assistant.”

“The Archivist isn’t in,” Martin says. “So why are you here?”

The monster at his desk looks almost surprised. Almost. The expression’s not quite right, like it hasn’t properly tried on ‘surprise’ before. “A servant of the Eye with a faulty memory? How unfortunate.” It leans forward, those hands settling flat on his desk. “I told you. I came to say hello.”

Martin takes a breath. “To me?”

Its nod would be encouraging, if its hands weren’t too close for comfort. If it weren’t the thing it is. (Martin doesn’t know _what_ it is, only that it’s fully capable of killing him, if it likes.) It looks as though it has more to say, but stops, appears to have caught a scent or a sound, a beast on the hunt. It steps back from his desk. There’s a door behind it, a yellow door tucked between bookcases, where there’s not room for it; the sight fills Martin with a bone-deep terror, drains the blood from his face.

“Until next time, Martin Blackwood,” the monster called Michael says, and slinks through its door. “Try not to be too much like Michael.”

Its door has just shut when the door to the Archive swings open. Basira steps in, carrying a precariously arranged stack of books. She looks at Martin, and the space around him, and frowns. “Were you talking to somebody? I thought I heard voices.”

“No.” Martin shakes his head. The yellow door is gone again, leaving a single bare inch of wall. The door can’t have been there, but it was. “It’s just me.”

“Hm.” She looks unconvinced, but there’s nobody here, no cause for her to argue with him. She sets her books on her newly adopted desk and settles in.

For the first time in ages, Martin feels no more watched than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> brain, dumping this in my lap: here you go, I got you this  
> me: thanks, I don’t want it?  
> brain: congratulations, it’s yours now  
> me: what about that Christmas fic  
> brain, backflipping away: my work here is done


	2. Chapter 2

Several days pass by in relative normalcy. ‘Relative’ is, of course, the only sort of normalcy Martin remembers how to experience anymore. Nothing about his life is properly  _normal_ by any stretch of the definition, not even if he turns it all upside down and squints at it from really, really far away. It hasn’t been normal since he found Jane Prentiss in that basement.

No, that’s not right. His life hasn’t been normal since he came to work in the Archive; since Elias ushered him into his office for an interview. He doubts it ever will be again.

Things have been as normal as Martin bothers to expect.

Yes, Jon has come in on more than one occasion with sawdust in his clothes and a slick, shiny liquid on his skin that is  _not_  blood. (The color’s all wrong. Martin’s perfectly happy to continue having no idea what it is.) But the Institute hasn’t been invaded by any shadowy entities with a taste for people.

Yes, Martin now spends most of his days doing research that’s literally intended to help prevent the world plunging into something perpetually and unfathomably horrifying. But Elias hasn’t exhibited any previously unknown psychopathic tendencies (yet?), nor hitherto unrevealed scary magical powers.

Yes, the work environment has gone from ‘somewhat creepy’ to ‘deeply unpleasant’ to ‘fully hostile’ to ‘paid magical hostages.’ But nobody has threatened to kill anybody else in the last few days. Well, not that Martin has been present for. He supposes anything is possible with Daisy in the equation. He very much wishes Daisy weren’t in the equation.

But he hasn’t felt extra eyes tracking his every move. But Michael hasn’t returned.

Martin thinks that maybe—just maybe—it’s over. That the monster of sharp hands and alien corridors has lost interest in him, that its first visit was a fluke born of some curiosity since sated. He’s just Martin, after all. He’s nothing special, particularly given everything else around him. It has no reason to take further notice of him, no matter how much he may be ‘like Michael.’ He hasn’t decided yet if that was meant as an insult. Of  _course_ he worries over the Archivist. It’s only natural.

The Archive is empty today.

Martin has been on his own for hours, reading his way through a collection of newspaper articles pertaining to the Circus of the Other, progress hindered by half-faded text and torn originals. Melanie and Basira left for lunch ages ago; Tim is in the building, or was this morning, but Martin hasn’t seen him since eight; and Jon is away with Daisy  _again_ , looking into an incident with several mannequins up in Greenhill, and the Archive is so quiet he can hardly stand it. He misses the old days, Sasha’s humming and Tim’s joking.

His thoughts drift, without his say-so or want, to Michael. They have done all the time since it came to call. Half of what it said sounded like nonsense. The Eye, it mentioned that a lot; he knows, in a vague sort of way, that the Eye means the Archive, or the thing that’s in the Archive, over the Archive, enveloping them in its gaze. The thing that Elias is…part of? No, he doesn’t know nearly enough about that, and he’s not sure he wants to.

Martin forces his attention back to the photocopied newspaper article in front of him, its text so lightened by age as to be illegible. He leans close to this, mouthing along with the words he reads, willing them to make peace with his eyes. He’s hardly made it through a paragraph, copying it over into a composition book in his own spidery handwriting, which he can at least translate more easily later, when the door creaks open.

“We really ought to oil that,” he says, expecting to find Jon or Tim, or even Elias. Instead his eyes land on an impossible yellow door, there between the bookcases again, and Michael stood in front of it.

“Hello, Martin Blackwood.” Michael’s hand still rests on the doorknob. It’s as though it heard him thinking about it and decided that was summons enough. He hopes it cannot read his thoughts; but it is a monster, and working at the Institute has taught him little about monsters, only that they are constant and everywhere. It says, “They’ve left you alone. That’s a terribly dangerous thing to do. There are monsters about.”

“Hello,” Martin says, his voice faint. Of course he’s not lucky enough for its visit to have been a one-off. Over its shoulder he sees corridors full of paintings, the same painting, until the door closes with a  _click_  that does unkind things to his pulse. Michael’s still on this side. “Michael.”

“Yes,” it says, and steps away from the wall. It looms in front of him; it’s so tall, and so obviously unnatural that he can’t imagine it’s possible for it to do anything but loom. He shivers at the thought of it leaning against his desk the last time.

Martin decides to start with the less alarming thing. “Your door can’t fit there.”

Michael turns its head—necks aren’t meant to bend that far—and has a look at the wall. It sounds like it finds something intriguing about his suggestion. “That would be inconvenient. I did put it there.”

“But there’s not room,” Martin says, not sure who he’s trying to convince. Himself. Michael. The wall. He thinks that last might be the easiest to persuade.

“You must be right then,” it says agreeably.

Martin doesn’t want to look at it. He focuses on the wall instead, the space where that yellow door cannot possibly be. He  _tries_  to focus. His vision blurs around the edge, the door and the bookcases turning to fractal patterns. Best he give up before he develops a migraine. He shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again he finds Michael sitting nearer to him. It’s pulled the chair from Tim’s desk, to sit alongside the short edge of Martin’s. He’s unsurprised to find that it looms as well sat down as standing. Just like the last time, it watches him, impassive, like it’s waiting on something. Waiting on him, with all the patience in the world.

“What are you here for this time?” Martin asks, and before he can stop himself blurting it out, “You didn’t hear me thinking about you, did you?”

“You were thinking about me?” The monster called Michael continues to look at him, its face impossible to read. He bites down on his tongue. It says, after a long minute ticks by, “I have been thinking about you, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin’s stomach drops. It’s all he can do not to whimper outright. Maybe if he screams loud enough, Elias will notice. Elias would probably let Michael kill him, to see what his blood looked like spread across the Archive floor. He sets his hands on his desk and begins to stand.

“Are you going somewhere?” Michael makes no move to stop him.

“No,” Martin says, because his legs have locked up and put a stop to any thoughts of bolting for the door. The real door, not the yellow one. He drops back onto his chair. Michael pushes his cup of tea toward him, and he looks back and forth between the two before mumbling, “Thanks,” and taking a drink. It does nothing to stop him shaking. “Why—” He wets his lips and pretends Michael’s eyes haven’t followed his tongue. “Why were you thinking about me?”

“We were interrupted last time,” it says. “I wanted to finish our conversation.” It pauses, only a heartbeat. “You remembered, before, that I am Michael.”

“I haven’t been threatened by many things like you.” Its hands are skating across his desk at the moment, scratching a pattern into the antique mahogany. Elias’ll love that. He’s more likely to come downstairs to protect the varnish than he is Martin. “You sort of stand out.”

Michael preens, as though he’s bestowed the greatest praise. “You never answered my question.”

“Which question was that again?” Martin’s brow furrows.

“I thought we already discussed your faulty memory,” Michael says, and he thinks he’s disappointed it somehow. “The Eye is less discerning with its servants than it ought to be. But I suppose the Ceaseless Watcher has to make do with what servants it can lure into its temple. It’s hardly a very interesting role to play.” Its eyes slide over the newspaper articles, and the sound it makes is like that’s only proved its point; Martin is a bit lost as to what its point is. It gestures at the Archive. “Do you like it down here in the dark?”

“Not especially,” Martin says. He thinks of corridors that run on forever, where a woman wandered more lost than himself and Tim, where he thought he would be stuck forever. “It’s better than some places I’ve been.”

“Is it,” Michael says, more dubious than interrogative.

Its expression does not change, but Martin thinks he catches a flicker in its eyes; he thinks it’s amused by him. He thinks it’s been amused by him for a while. “You were watching me.”

“I was,” it says.

“But then you stopped,” he ventures.

Michael makes a sound that may be surprise, or pleasure, or something else entirely. “Perhaps the Eye’s influence isn’t entirely lost on you after all, if you’ve felt me looking.”

“I thought you lost interest.” He was right then. It’s Michael that was watching him, every place he went.

“I had distractions,” Michael says, its gaze drifting away from him and to its door. “They’re gone now. Watching you is very entertaining. I think I’ll continue. I hope you don’t mind.” Its voice drops to a whisper. “If you do mind, that’s unfortunate for you, and won’t change anything.”

Perfect. Just what he needs, is keeping this thing’s attention. Martin swallows. “Is that more sport for you?”

Michael laughs. The sound is all wrong. “Something like that.” It appraises him. “You’re so full of fear, it’s incredible that nothing has come for you before.”

Martin stiffens. “Is that why you’re here then? To take me back into your…” He nods jerkily at the door.

“Not today,” it says, and now it sounds as though it’s explaining something to a small child, if any small child would stand still long enough for it to speak to them. “Someone has to keep an eye on you.” It laughs again, this time at its own joke. “The Archivist won’t watch you. He’s far too busy chasing after the circus. He would throw you to them himself, if it would help to end them. Your skin for their dance for our ruin.”

“That’s not true,” Martin says quickly, setting his teacup down hard. That’s got his hackles up. It’s  _wrong_. Jon is doing everything he can to save them all, to keep them as safe as they can be. He may not care particularly for Martin, but he wouldn’t offer him up to Nikola Orsinov on a platter. “As you seemed keen on killing me the first time we met, you’ll forgive me not caring much what you have to say.”

“Of course not.” Michael’s finger stills on his desk. Its tone gives away nothing; it sounds the same, like every word Martin says is a source of amusement. “I apologize.” Its head tilts back, and Martin wonders if it is looking for Elias or for the Eye, and if it finds either of them. (As it can watch him from wherever it spends its time, he doubts the floor poses much obstacle.) It goes on, “Your master might watch you, but only to see which of the rest of us come for you. They will do nothing to protect you.”

Skepticism and disbelief run through him. “What, and  _you’re_  going to protect me?”

“If I like,” it says, in an idle, undecided sort of way, and Martin has to take a very deep breath or he’s not sure what he’ll do.

“Is there an actual reason you’re here,” he says, “or d’you just want to remind me that the Archivi—that Jon is indifferent to me, and be ominous? Because I’ve got plenty of that in my life already and I don’t actually need you to add to it.”

“Do I make you nervous?” There’s that fascination again, as though it doesn’t already know what answer it’s going to get. As though it hasn’t just told him he’s full of fear.

“You could cut my throat with your hand.” It’s almost a relief to find that he sounds more irritated than frightened, in the moment. “So yes, a bit.”

One of those hands whips toward his face with the speed of a viper. He only just stops himself flinching; he doesn’t want to give it the satisfaction. Its hand comes to a stop a hairs-breadth from his cheek and hovers there. Martin does not look away from its face when one fingertip lands high on his cheek, though his breath stutters as Michael drags its finger down his face in a languid curve. It feels like a paring knife, splitting his skin, but Martin remains still.

Michael says, “That’s very good,” and he thinks he’s satisfied it after all. It retracts its hand, a finger now glistening bright red. It stands with no warning, sinuous as liquid. “I’m keeping you from your work, Martin Blackwood. Try your hardest to stop the circus. I find them very bothersome.”

It is at its door now, and Martin doesn’t know what compels him to say, “My memory’s not faulty.” Michael cocks its head, so he knows it is listening to him. “The problem is that you don’t make very much sense.”

“I’m not supposed to,” it says, and Martin feels blood trickling down his face. “Do try to keep up.”

Its laughter rings in his ears long after the door has closed behind it.


	3. Chapter 3

There’s no sign of Michael the following day.

Martin spends his time being jumpier than usual, yelping and dropping a box when Melanie rounds a corner to ask if he’s seen any sign of case file 0130807 lately. She frowns and tells him, “I’m hardly the most frightening thing around here, Martin.”

He stammers out an, “I know, I know,” and she just shakes her head at him before repeating the initial question. When she’s gone, leaving him on his own to clean up his mess, he thinks he hears a bubble of laughter.

* * *

It doesn’t come the day after that, either, though Martin feels those eyes watching him and wonders where it is. This time he has no illusions that it’s finished with him. He’s caught its attention, much as he wishes he hadn’t, as there are more than enough monsters in his day-to-day, and he prefers not to have them focused on him. Bad enough they’re so fixated on Jon.

“Michael?” he says into the air once, uncertainly, because he swears he’s heard something humming and felt a twinge of sensation in the mark on his face. But there’s no response. No door appears to ignore the laws of physics and be stepped through. Instead the Archive door opens, the  _real_ one that’s supposed to be there, and it’s Basira returning from the library, one finger already holding her place in a new book. He greets her absently, and Melanie as well when she returns with poison in her eyes; he doesn’t know where she’s been, and doesn’t plan to ask, given the look on her face.

It’s an hour later that the door opens again and Martin looks up eagerly. Maybe it’ll be Jon arriving with some sort of good news. It’s not, though. Martin puts a stop to his shoulders sagging at the sight of Elias coming through the door.

“Elias,” Melanie says with a false sweetness that she can’t possibly expect him to believe. “Gracing us with your presence in the dungeon today?”

 _Do you like it down here in the dark?_  Martin hears, and shivers.

The smile Elias gives her hasn’t got a speck of kindness in it. “I don’t suggest thinking of it that way, Melanie.”

“I’m not interested in your suggestions.” Melanie grins poison at him. Martin wishes she wouldn’t intentionally rile him like this. It’s not just her who’s stuck here. There’s no point to harassing their—jailer, keeper, whatever.

“No,” Elias says, “I didn’t think you would be.”

Basira cuts in before Melanie can offer another retort, the way her mouth’s already open to do. “Do you need something, Elias?”

“Not with either of you.” Elias’ attention turns to Martin and he stops himself shrinking back. He meets Elias’ eyes. If he can remain still while a monster slits his face open, he can handle Elias Bouchard. Also terrifying, also a monster, but it’s not the same fear.  _You’re so full of fear._  Elias crosses the room in a nearly imperious way, as though the mess weren’t there to impede him. “Martin.”

“Yes?” It’s not difficult to sound like he has no idea what this is about.

“I wondered if there were any unauthorized guests in the Archive lately,” Elias says, like he already knows something.

Martin swallows. Michael is watching them. He feels its eyes burning into him. If he tells Elias about its visits, will Elias put a stop to it coming?  _They will do nothing to protect you._  Michael’s not safe. Michael’s not to be trusted. But neither is Elias.

“No,” he says, and feels a bit of a thrill at telling the lie. His own immeasurably tiny rebellion. “Nobody’s been here except for all of us. Unless Daisy’s unauthorized now?” At this, he pulls a rictus smile.

Elias gives him a long look. Martin hopes very much that he doesn’t look down. The mark that Michael left should be covered up—there’s a wash of dizziness every time Martin’s eyes land there—but he hasn’t paid it full attention while sorting through the mounds of paper accrued in researching the circus and statements. “You’re sure of that?”

“If there has been,” Martin says, “they must have been invisible. I haven’t seen anybody.”

“I believe you,” Elias says, and Martin knows immediately that he doesn’t. But there’s no CCTV down here. Nothing to capture Michael’s being, unless Elias can see him speaking to it. And if he could see it, there wouldn’t be any need for him to ask, surely? “Do let me know if anything changes. I’ve had some concerns about security here at the Institute recently.”

 _You weren’t concerned when we kept warning you about Prentiss,_  Martin thinks. “I’ll let you know.”

As soon as Elias has gone, Melanie and Basira both look directly at him. He sighs. “Go on, then.”

“What was that all about?” Basira says.

“Have you had somebody interesting down here, Martin?” Melanie follows.

“No, I really haven’t,” Martin says, surreptitiously adjusting the arrangement of his desk so that Michael’s fractal pattern is fully hidden.

“Elias seemed to think you did.” Basira closes her book. Actually closes it.

Martin wishes he had his own door that he could open and disappear through, though his would have to go somewhere nicer. “Elias was mistaken. I just told him so. You heard me.”

“Elias,” Melanie says, glancing at the door, “knows more than he should about what goes on down here. This wouldn’t have anything to do with that scratch on your face, would it?”

Martin shakes his head. He tells the lie he thought up the other day, in case somebody asked; nobody has, till now. “I had a fight with a cat.”

“You don’t have a cat.” Basira sets him with a look that’s entirely too Police Constable Hussain.

“It was a street cat,” Martin says. He knows it’s not the most convincing thing he might try, but that’s what the scratch looks closest to, and he’s  _not_ going to tell them that a monster’s come to call on him twice. That he expects it again all the time. That it’s still watching and it’s probably laughing in that way it has. “They’re all over the place.”

“You don’t have to lie to  _us_ ,” Melanie says.

“I’m not lying,” Martin says, and stands before they can keep pressing him. “I’m going out to lunch.”

They don’t attempt to stop him. He hadn’t expected they would.

Fifteen minutes later, he’s plopping down in a spot of grass in Kensington Green, a bag of takeaway kebab clutched in one hand. He takes in a deep breath. This is ridiculous. His life is ridiculous. Also, unbelievable. Also, terrifying. If he’s lucky, Melanie and Basira will leave him alone after a little while, but Elias having noticed anything at all…Martin doesn’t like that. He doesn’t want more of Elias’ attention than he’s historically gotten.

He eats quickly, finished long before he’s ready to go back to the Institute, and so he lies back in the grass, his hands behind his head. It’s a lovely day out, the sun shining to its fullest, the breeze warm and just present enough to be pleasant. His eyes slip closed and though he doesn’t intend to take a nap, a nap does seem intent on taking him.

It’s impossible to say how long he stays that way, half-dozing in the grass, before he hears, “You look much more comfortable in the sunlight, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin jerks bolt upright, head rushing in protest of the sudden movement. This wave of dizziness has nothing to do with sharp-cut fractal patterns. Michael sits beside him in the grass, its arrival too quiet for him to have noticed. The grass beneath it doesn’t seem to bend the way it ought to under a person’s weight. It cuts through a blade with its finger while it waits for him to speak. What he eventually says is, “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“No,” it says, and he thinks he’s offended it. “That sounds like a terribly dull way to kill someone. I’m much more creative with the people I take.” It sounds, of all things, earnest. “I have to make my own fun, you know.”

 _Ridiculous._ Martin stares at it. It stares back, both of them unblinking.  _Absolutely bloody ridiculous._

“Okay,” Martin says, because what else can he in this situation. “And your idea of making your own fun is…coming to visit me?”

“I’ve enjoyed our conversations so far.” It’s smiling at him. He thinks it’s smiling. “I wanted your company.”

Martin continues to stare at it. He might go so far as to say he ogles it. Most people find him annoying or dull, or both. He knows what they think of him at the Institute. He’s not an idiot. But Michael—a monster—an actual horror story monster—is sat beside him telling him it wants his company. “Have you?” he blurts out. “Wanted my—I mean—you know what, pretend I didn’t say that.”

Oh, good, now he’s talking to Michael like he’s back in secondary school and it’s a boy he’s been fancying from afar. This would be another excellent time for an escape door. There’s no sign of Michael’s.

Michael doesn’t seem to notice his sudden embarrassment. Its head tilts. “Haven’t you enjoyed mine?”

Martin bites down on his tongue, not trusting what might come out of his mouth. Telling it he hasn’t would  _definitely_  offend it. He thinks so, anyway. It’s an odd monster, and maybe it wouldn’t be offended at all, but he would rather not take the chance. Besides: he’s not sure it would be a wholly truthful statement. “I don’t know if enjoy is the word I’d use.”

“That’s not nice,” it says, not unhappily, and Martin flops back on the ground. “Is that comfortable?”

“Yeah, actually it is,” Martin says. It gives him a look he takes as considering—and then it lays down beside him. He can’t help his mouth dropping open, though he closes it quickly so as to not look like a gaping idiot of a fish. There’s a monster relaxing in the grass with him. Sure there is. It’s not any stranger than what’s come before. Except that it is, a little.

He looks away from it, up to the sky where fluffy clouds drift by, all of them having a much easier day than Martin is. It’s been a long time since he’s given the clouds a good looking at. Today he finds a deer among them, and a squat cabin with a dog, and then he says, “That one looks like a rabbit in a top hat.”

“Does it? Where?” Michael asks. Martin’s not sure it’s really interested, but he points anyway. “It’s peculiar, the way you all find the things you want to see.”

“And the thing I want to see is a rabbit in a top hat?” Martin glances at it, leaving aside that it’s a monster and it hasn’t really got any business calling him peculiar. He finds that its focus is on the sky above them. His eyes stick there, on its face. The times he’s seen it before now have been in the Archive, where everyone and everything has an odd sort of cast. In the daylight he finds himself staring with less shame than might be proper; but it’s a monster, it’s not likely to care for decorum. Its face is angular and delicate, with lips that look soft and eyes that are a washed-out green. He might call it attractive, if he didn’t know what it was.

Michael’s eyes slide to him. Its chest moves up and down with breathing. “You’re looking at me very intently, Martin Blackwood. Why are you doing that?”

 _I think you’re pretty_  isn’t likely to come out of his mouth. He says, “Do you actually need to breathe?”

“No,” it says. And stops. Breathing, that is. “I’m not flesh and blood and air. Michael was.”

It looks at its hands, which have remained as sharp as ever, a pensive air about it.

“Oh,” Martin says without understanding. It is Michael and it isn’t and he doesn’t yet know what that means. “Why isn’t everyone screaming at the sight of you, by the way?”

“You all find the things you want to see,” Michael repeats. “Reality is malleable.”

Michael reaches for him and he does not move away. Its hands are ordinary now, or look it. It runs a finger down his arm. Again, his skin splits around it and blood whispers from the wound. Its hand closes around his wrist. Martin only inhales. Its touch is gentle, or gentle as it can be. Its hand still looks like a person’s. It says, “Very good.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying that,” Martin says. “Or doing that.”

“You lied to your master,” it says without letting go of him. Its other fingers prick into his skin too.

Martin frowns at it for several reasons. “You mentioned that last time as well. My master. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Eye is so lax in teaching its servants,” Michael says.

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No,” it says, “I’m not.”

“I think you are.” Blood trickles its way down his arm. It doesn’t hurt as much as it might. Michael laughs, and Martin says, “You have some sense of humor.”

“You are amusing,” Michael says. He scowls at it.

For several minutes, neither of them say a word. For several minutes, Michael tilts its head back to look at the sky again. For several minutes, it does not let go of him, and he does not ask it to.

After those several minutes it says, “Why did you lie to Elias Bouchard?”

“I like you better than I like him,” Martin says immediately. It occurs to him only after that that he actually does. It laughs again. Something in it bolsters him. “Michael?”

It makes a sound that says it’s listening.

“The first time you came to see me, you told me not to be too much like Michael. What did you mean by that?”

The question has been an itch in the back of his mind.

“Michael was disposable.” It looks at him. Its hand twitches on his wrist, its fingers cutting deeper and making him grit his teeth. He’ll have to stop and wash that well before he returns to work. “Michael trusted Gertrude Robinson. Placing trust in the Archivist is an unfortunate habit. You should not have so much faith in Jonathan Sims, who is a better Archivist than Gertrude was. Perhaps a more dangerous Archivist.”

“Even if you’re right,” Martin says, pleased that his voice is steady, “why should you care what happens to me?”

It squeezes once, tracing along a vein. His breath catches and it says something he cannot hear. Then, “I shouldn’t.”

“You’re very confusing,” Martin says, “d’you know that?”

“I apologize.” It makes an amused sound and releases him. “I don’t mean to confuse you. That is a facet of my nature. I cannot help what I am.”

Martin pulls his arm back to cradle it. He doesn’t want to look at his wound or at Michael, so shifts his gaze to sky. The clouds have gone to fractals. “Was that really necessary?”

“I haven’t changed them,” it says. “I would like to see you occasionally.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” he says mildly. “Also—you what?”

Again it says something he cannot hear. It moves, its hand searching out his wrist again, tucked as it is against his stomach. This time when it lands, it also  _feels_  like an ordinary hand. “Martin Blackwood.”

Martin looks away. “You don’t have to use my second name every time you know. You can just call me Martin.”

Then it’s closer to him than before, on both knees in front of him, its face  _right there_. He thinks for one moment, alarmed and perplexed, that it is going to kiss him. It says, “Martin,” in a hushed tone, and his senses abandon him.

Michael is gone when he comes back to himself. His wrist is fine despite the blood on his shirt and the memory of pain in his skin. Martin stares at the place where it sat. Where the grass is unbent. He thinks it said, ‘You’re something for honesty.’ But that can’t be right.

He stays in the park until the clouds have gone back to normal.


	4. Chapter 4

Martin is halfway back to the Institute when he remembers that his shirt is, in fact, covered in blood. Michael hadn’t been so helpful as to do something about  _that_. No wonder people are giving him a wide berth, it looks like he’s gone and killed somebody. God, he wishes he had a jacket along.

For a moment he stands, waffling, on the sidewalk. It’ll be easier to explain away a new shirt to Melanie and Basira than it would be wearing his own fluids. They’re already suspicious of him, thanks to Elias. This way he can tell them he’s spilled something down himself.

He ducks, unhappily, into the nearest menswear shop. The price tags glare at him. He glances at the time. There’s not much of it before he’s due back at the Institute, and while he’s not exactly worried about his lunch running long—he ought to be getting back, oughtn’t he? He rifles through a few of the nearest shirts and chooses the cheapest of them, twice what he likes to pay, and approaches the register. He pretends not to notice the clerk’s wide eyes.

“D’you mind if I use the changing room?” he says, stuffing his wallet away.

The clerk gives a mute shake of the head, then asks, weakly, “Do you want me to dispose of that one, sir?”

He says, “No, thanks,” and she looks relieved.

Martin changes quick as he can, and stuffs the old shirt into his bag. He doubts the blood will wash out, but if he scrubs hard, maybe. He  _likes_  this shirt.

* * *

 

Michael Shelley.

That’s the name Martin unearths when he returns to the Institute.

Truth told, it takes very little effort on his part. It’s only a quick stop at Rosie’s desk to ask for the Institute’s employment records. She doesn’t bat an eye, and offers him a biscuit for his wait. The printed records are neatly collated, nothing like what they’ve got to work with in the Archive. He hasn’t even got to go back very far. Only a few short years before his own lies led him to an interview in Elias’ stuffy, intimidating office.

‘Michael Shelley - Archival Assistant, 2004 - 2009’

There’s no explanation regarding his termination, or if he was terminated at all. But he did work for The Magnus Institute. And he did work under Gertrude Robinson. There’s little to be found about him in the employment records: several London addresses, education history, an emergency contact whose name gives no indication of their relationship to Michael. There’s one picture of him, and Martin frowns to see it. There’s no mistaking him. It  _is_  the Michael Martin is coming to know, this one natural and less a facsimile of humanity.

He doesn’t feel Michael here now, or he might say its name and see if it will come to him.

Instead he shifts his research. Hospital and police records offer him nothing to go on. He checks housing records, too, and confirms the last known residence on record was taken from him in 2013; there’s nothing after that. No forwarding addresses. No police reports for so much as an accident.

There is simply no sign of Michael Shelley, excepting the sharp-fingered monster.

He hears  _Michael trusted Gertrude Robinson_  again and again, a looping lilt in his head.

* * *

Michael keeps away for several days.

Martin might think it trying to build his anticipation, but he doubts that it would occur to it to do so. Besides, he doesn’t anticipate seeing it. He doesn’t. Better for it to stay away. (He knows it won’t.) He stops for groceries on Friday, intending to attempt a stir-fry, and leaves the shop with a larger paper bag than intended. There were several new teas for trying, including a lavender and a honey-apple, and he’s been running short on produce, and he’s tried to keep his flat better stocked since—well, he doesn’t want to chance surviving on canned peaches again.

He maneuvers the stairs with some difficulty and the door with even more than that. The paper bag  _thwaps_  onto his kitchen table in a way that satisfies him. Martin pulls a carton of milk free, turning to rearrange his fridge, fit it behind the mostly-emptied carton.

When the door closes, Michael stands there with its hands in its pockets. As soon as he’s seen it, it says, “Hello, Martin.”

Martin jumps back and swears, and thinks distantly that Michael  _is_ going to give him a heart attack, interesting way to kill him or not. Michael is looking at him now with its head canted just to one side, its mouth suggesting amusement. “Oh, good,” he says, trying to pretend he’s not ruffled, though that’s a lost cause given he’d gone a good foot into the air, “you’re in my flat now.”

“I have been before,” it says. Martin glances about, surreptitious as he can be, and does not see its door. Maybe it left it in another room. He’d rather not think about it.

It’s been to his flat: well, of course it has, he’s felt it watching him, hasn’t he? He hopes it’s limited its spying to moments when he’s not drooling in his sleep or tripping on trousers left on his floor or otherwise making a fool of himself in the supposed privacy of his own home.

“It stinks here,” it says, and Martin abruptly turns from it.

There’s a  _monster_  telling him his flat smells bad. He ignores it as well as he can—which isn’t very, it takes up more space than it ought to, its presence a mammoth, threatening thing—and returns to his grocery bag. It’s got to be put away no matter the slight change in circumstances. He frees fresh fruit and frozen vegetables and boxes of tea and so on, and pretends that Michael isn’t watching him.

“I didn’t invite you in,” he says, “so if you’re just going to complain about my home you can go ahead and leave again.”

“It stinks of the flesh hive,” Michael says with an emphasis Martin struggles to name. It might be cross or it might be cheerful. He drops the package of biscuits he’s holding.

It’s been  _months_  since then and Jane Prentiss never entered his apartment and Martin has not smelled anything amiss. He looks at Michael. “I don’t know what you want me to do about that,” he says, much more cross than cheerful. “Should I light a candle?”

Is there a candle strong enough to overwhelm supernatural smells?

“Not to worry,” Michael says conversationally. “I’m here now. It will smell of something better soon enough.”

“The Twisting Deceit, wasn’t it?”

Michael’s mouth opens a little. There’s a shift in its form that he thinks means he’s surprised it. He likes the idea that he has.

“I’ve done some research,” he says, picking the biscuits back up and edging around the table in order to put them in the cabinet. There’s a spider sitting on the counter. It pays him no mind. “I found all of our statements that mentioned you—you, specifically, or anything that sounded like you. D’you know they always mention your hair? And Jon had some notes—anyway, I wanted to put some of it together before I saw you again.” He shuts the cabinet. “I don’t think I figured out very much, honestly.”

“I’m flattered,” Michael says, crossing the kitchen and pulling itself up a chair. It doesn’t ask if he minds. Its manners leave something to be desired, but it isn’t human and Martin supposes he cannot ask for much. As long as it doesn’t shred his good towels. Then they’ll have to have words. “You could have just asked me.”

Martin raises his eyebrows. He packs frozen corn and peas into the freezer, sliding them into the back. “Sure. Am I supposed to expect you to tell me the truth?”

“I haven’t lied to you so far, Martin,” it says. It occurs to him that he likes the way it says his name, almost like a favorite word, almost like something it values, and he shouldn’t like it, given what Michael is. Then again, he also shouldn’t trust having it behind him, but he’s got his back to it anyway and he doesn’t feel threatened.

Maybe that’s how it wants him to feel.

_It’s peculiar, the way you all find the things you want to see._

Martin gives it a long look, unsure if he believes it—he wants to, but he always wants to trust, and he should trust it just as much as he should like how it forms his name. He returns to putting away his groceries without saying anything. Michael is silent too, so much so that he thinks it might have gone. But every time he checks over his shoulder he finds it there, so still it may be dead. Or hunting.

The last thing to be put in its place is the tea, this because he intends to have some. He’s fetched one cup, noticed the spider is gone, when he thinks to ask, “D’you want some tea?” It comes out less hysterically than he might have expected, if someone told him he’d be offering a monster tea.

“I would like that,” Michael says, folding its hands together and resting them atop his table. At least it isn’t drawing shapes. The last thing he needs is a wave of nausea with his toast in the mornings.

They don’t speak while he fixes the tea. Michael accepts its cup with a murmur of thanks that surprises him. Martin drops into a chair and takes a long sip, while Michael raises its cup to its mouth and inhales—but it hasn’t got to inhale, and Martin wonders if that helps it to smell or if it’s all for show—and puts it down again without drinking. It looks pleased to have the cup in front of it. Martin suddenly feels tired. “Are you going to make this a habit?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Michael says. It dips a finger into its tea and sucks on it thoughtfully, making a sound he thinks is consideration. “You haven’t asked me why I’m here this time.”

“I didn’t ask you last time, either,” Martin points out. “I’ve decided to assume you just want to bother me.” He takes a drink. “Also, you told me you’d like to see me occasionally.”

His stomach flips when he says this.

“Do I bother you?” it asks.

Martin hesitates. “No,” he says, “not really.” He studies the skin of his wrist, where no sign remains that it ever did anything to him. The same can’t be said of his face, where he expects a scar. But here, where it ruined his shirt (and the shirt  _is_  ruined, no amount of cold water and scrubbing has saved it), where he bled more, there’s nothing. “You fixed my wrist.”

“Yes.”

“How’d you do that?”

Michael offers him its hand. Martin looks at it dubiously. There’s no hurry on its face. He takes another drink with its hand in the air between them, and then offers his own before he can think better of it. Its finger, the same one it sucked tea from a moment ago, slices into his palm. The burn is something awful. His breath catches in his throat, and Michael traces the injury again, its finger pushing deeper into his skin.

“You handle that very well,” it says. He’s almost positive it’s smiling now. There’s something in its eyes that makes him light-headed, something liquid in its voice, and Martin tears his eyes away.

“Pay attention,” it chides then, pushing down so that he just stops himself yelping. He forces himself to look at his hand, at  _its_  hand making a wreck of him. There’s more blood than he really wants to see leaving his own body. Again. “It’s all a matter of perception.”

“Bodies don’t work that way,” Martin protests.

“They do for me.” Michael runs its thumb along his palm, wiping blood away, and just like that his skin appears to knit itself back together. “There. I’ve told your body to perceive itself as uninjured.”

Frustration rises in Martin’s throat. “But am I  _actually_  uninjured?”

“That’s an interesting question,” it says, and picks its tea up again. It never takes a drink, though it appears to enjoy the pantomime. His blood is on its thumb and smearing across the cup. Wonderful. “You’re not  _injured_  now. I don’t intend to leave you bleeding.”

“You did the first time,” Martin says.

Michael looks around the kitchen. “Do you like this place better than the Watcher’s temple?” it says, like it hasn’t heard him.

There it goes, changing the subject again. Martin doubts there’s a point in trying to get it back on track. He shrugs. “A bit.”

“Is there anywhere you do like to be?”

Martin thinks. It doesn’t take him long to say, “Not really.”

“That is unfortunate,” Michael says.

“D’you like being in those freaky corridors of yours?”

Michael laughs. “It doesn’t quite work that way.”

Martin stands and goes to the sink to wash the blood from his hand. Over the water he says, “I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“What is there not to understand?” Michael sounds genuinely interested in the answer. But Michael is a liar. Michael changes perception. Michael has cut him open the last three times he’s seen it; Michael has fixed him, more or less, two of those times. Twisting Deceit, indeed.

“There’s a monster sitting in my flat,” Martin says.

“Yes,” Michael agrees.

“That’s not a normal situation to be in!” Now he does sound somewhat hysterical. “You ought to at least be here to eat me! That would make sense!”

It’s laughing again and the sound pounds through his head. “I’m not.”

“No,” Martin mutters, returning to the table. He’d like to finish his tea. It’s not a fix-all, but it does help. “You’re here to sit at my table and not drink my tea.”

Michael looks at him for ages. It doesn’t just  _feel_  like ages; he casually checks the time on the oven once, and it’s been about five minutes. Eventually it says, “I like you. You’re...different. Stronger than Michael was.”

“I honestly have no idea how to react to you.”

“Is that so different from being around people?”

Martin thinks of being in the Archive with Jon, with Melanie and Basira and Daisy. With Tim, who he knew how to talk to, once. “No, I suppose not.” He pauses. “Are you people or—were you, once?”

“Michael was a person,” it says. “But I am not. I never have been. I cannot be Michael in the way that Michael can be me.”

“I looked into him before I looked into you.” Martin runs his thumb along the edge of his cup. “I couldn’t find what actually happened to him.”

“Gertrude threw him away,” Michael says, and just for a moment there is something hard in its voice, something that hurts Martin’s chest. “I would not like to see you thrown away as well, Martin.”

It is gone before Martin can ask anything else. Martin stares at its empty chair, too startled to react. He doesn’t understand it any better now than he did when it arrived. But it—no, not the time. He picks up its cup, the one with his blood on it, and has a drink. It’s gone cold.

“Waste of perfectly good tea,” he grumbles, and dumps it down the sink.


	5. Chapter 5

Martin spends the rest of his weekend alone. Properly alone. It’s odd, the way he can tell the difference, when Michael is watching him—watching over him?—and when it is not. It isn’t a difference he can put into words, though he does try. He spends nearly three hours tucked into his couch on Saturday, his face screwed up with concentration, thinking whether it’s like a gust of wind—no—or CCTV when you haven’t found the camera yet—that’s not it—or having a house haunted by something that’s not a ghost, and that’s the closest he comes, but that’s not it either.

He’s falling asleep on Monday the next time he catches a note of Michael. It’s a thing he can’t put his finger on, just as he slips from waking to dreaming. His dreams are odd smiles and sharp fingers pulling at his mouth; he wakes hours later to an empty flat.

Waiting for it keeps him on his toes. He expects it now, when he shuts a door or turns around, when he opens his eyes from a daydream or wanders to the toilet in the middle of the night. It takes its time in coming back. Does it even share a human understanding of time? What’s a minute or a day or a week to something like Michael? It might reappear when he’s ninety and be startled by his white hair. That’s if it experiences ‘startled.’ That’s if he lives to ninety. Thirty will come as a surprise.

Martin carries on his search while he waits.

(Not that he’s waiting.)

(But he is.)

(He thinks he can’t be expected not to.)

There’s precious little else for him to dig up where Michael Shelley is concerned. His initial bout of research was thorough. Unsatisfactory for it, but thorough. It’s common enough in the Archive, spending hours on something and coming up with almost nothing, or actually nothing in too many cases. Martin’s lost track of how many hours he’s lost to researching the circus, chasing after the smallest scrap of information in the hopes of being led to something greater and coming away with less than that first tidbit in the end. That doesn’t stop him trying. This feels important.

He digs into anything he  _can_  find regarding Michael Shelley. He locates photographs of him growing up, one picture with a girlfriend, another from a secondary school field day. There are a few excellence awards from his university. Graduation records flow into the same employment records he found before. He’s grasped at every thread and found them cut off at the ends.

The circus, too, is as elusive as ever. Martin grows listless looking into it, hunched over books and newspaper articles that will come to nothing as surely as everything else.

But it’s Michael he’s thinking about—he remembers its voice on Helen Richardson’s statement, and he remembers Jon’s supposed lost battle with a bread knife, and he thinks that it is gentler with him that it was with Jon—when somebody clears their throat beside him. He finds that he’s been rubbing absently at the spot on his palm where it injured him and left him uninjured, or not injured; whether those are the same thing or not is still up for debate.

Jon’s beside his desk. Nobody else is in the Archive. But Martin feels the edges of perception on them. Not Michael’s. The Eye’s. What else had Michael called it? The Watcher? It is watching them now. Watching Jon, especially, Martin thinks. Its Archivist. Whatever that means.

“Oh,” Martin says, nervous for a reason he cannot name. Michael’s not here. It wouldn’t matter if it was. There’s no reason for him to be nervous around Jon, who is possibly not a monster (yet?); but if he is, he’s the least monstrous of the ones Martin’s met. “Jon. I didn’t know you’d gotten back from—where were you this time?”

It’s difficult to keep track, though he’s only been gone a day. Martin’s seen him more recently than Michael. He wishes his brain would stop comparing everything to Michael.

Jon’s nose wrinkles. “Portsmouth. We thought the circus might have a depot there, but it wasn’t anything as helpful as that. Ordinary smugglers. Daisy gave them quite a scare. I think a few of them might be looking for a new line of work.”

Martin would laugh, but it’s Daisy, and he doesn’t think ordinary smugglers deserve her usual tactics. He hasn’t forgotten the blood on Jon’s throat. He realizes he’s still tracing the no-longer-wound on his hand and forces himself to stop.

“Oh.” It’s more disappointed this time. The Unknowing may be coming any day now, and it seems they’re getting no closer to answers about where and how and what they can possibly do to prevent it. Maybe he should ask Michael. It hadn’t given him any advice the second time, though it does want the circus stopped. Or so it said. “Is there something you’d like me to try finding next?”

Jon shakes his head. His eyes flick toward the ceiling. He knows better than Martin what’s watching them here. It keeps a closer eye (oh, very funny) on its Archivist than on any of his assistants. “Have things been all right here?”

He’s asking about Elias, of course, about the circus, about Basira and Melanie.

Martin might say, ‘A monster’s decided it wants to be my friend.’ He doesn’t.

“Everything’s good here,” he says. “I mean, not  _good_  as such, obviously, but nothing’s gotten worse that I can think of.”

Michael’s not a worse thing.

“That’s good,” Jon says, and Martin thinks a box has been checked off and Jon is already looking ahead to the next one.

He says, “I’ll go and fix you some tea.”

At least Jon will drink it, unlike some monsters he might name.

* * *

It’s almost more odd as the days go by and he does not feel Michael looking at him.

* * *

Another Saturday morning comes along, and Martin sleeps in. It’s a longer sleep than he usually manages to get. But it’s far from restful, full of skins and luring calliope music, so he’s not going to credit it with being any good. He wanders into the kitchen and there is Michael, perched on his dining table. This comes as less of a shock than it might. Martin stops in the doorway. They look at each other across the room. He yawns, and waits.

“Martin,” it says.

There. Now they’ve got their proper start.

“I wondered where you were,” Martin says, and crosses the room to fill the kettle. Once it’s started heating, he makes his way to the refrigerator—not looking at Michael—and scans its contents. There’s a carton of eggs. He takes these, as well as the milk, and the cheese, and sets about fixing an omelet.

“Did you?” it says; he can’t identify the tone.

“It’s been a week,” he says, and wishes he hadn’t. It doesn’t need to know he’s been keeping track. He hasn’t been keeping track, it’s just…notable, having a monster in his life. He distracts himself by digging through a cupboard.

Michael waits until he’s finished the clanging of kitchenware to say, “I have been otherwise occupied. But I’ve finished for now and you’ll be seeing more of me.”

“Ah.” Martin doesn’t have to think about deciding not to ask what it means by otherwise occupied. He has several guesses, and is grateful it hasn’t tracked blood into his flat. (That’s what his life has come to.) He’s not sure if he’d prefer to say ‘Welcome back’ or ‘Supposing I don’t actually want to see more of you’ or just get on with whatever odd little conversation they’re bound to have today, that he’ll spend the next few days studying from every angle, not understanding it any better.

“Don’t you want to know where I’ve been, Martin?”

“I really don’t think I do,” he says, and feels it watching him, and hazards, “You have a collection of humans you harass and you had to make sure the others didn’t feel forgotten.”

“You’re the only human I’m interested in,” Michael says, and Martin tells his stomach to knock that off immediately; it doesn’t listen.

Martin plates his omelet and returns his attention to his morning tea, the jasmine today, and a thing he’s far more comfortable with.

Michael says, “I would like a cup.”

Now Martin does look at it again. He says, “No.”

“Why not?” It does something approximating a frown.

Martin gives it a suspicious, somewhat irritated look. “Because last time you didn’t drink any and I had to dump it all. Please get off my table. There are chairs.”

“No,” it says, presumably to the first part, as it does slide down from the table and pull out a chair. It sits. “But I would still like to have some.”

“What if,” Martin says, “I just give you a cup to hold?”

“I am not a child in need of pacifying, Martin Blackwood,” it says, and he thinks he’s irritated it. Good, it’s not just him; bad, an irritated Michael might be much less careful with him.

“I’ll fill it with water?” he says, as though that might sweeten the deal.

“I would like your tea.”

Martin sighs and fixes two cups. He spears his omelet somewhat more viciously than necessary before passing Michael its cup. Another waste of perfectly good tea. He shouldn’t complain. There are far worse problems he could have with Michael in his flat. Still, he feels more than a little mournful at the thought of pouring it down the sink again.

Then he settles in at the table and pretends there’s nothing unusual at all about having breakfast with Michael across from him. One of its hands is out of sight beneath the table; the other is odd to look at, he can’t focus on it, as the fingers seem to shift, knives and then not. It’s easier if he looks at its face. Which is easy enough to do. If it were a proper man at his table with a face like that—well, it would be a better morning.

It’s not a terrible morning, though he’d like to say it is. He’d like even more to pretend there hadn’t been something nice about seeing it in his kitchen. Michael’s not his friend—wouldn’t that just be sad, to call this thing his friend? he's not yet that desperately lonely—but it did say it enjoys his company.

“You could at least have the decency to pretend,” he says, followed by a bite of omelet.

To his surprise, Michael does lift the cup to its mouth. He resists the urge to crane his neck and see if it drinks any; its throat isn’t working, though its lips are wet. Martin doesn’t want to look at its lips, or wonder what a monster’s mouth would feel like on his own. This is all a bit pathetic.

“I’ve been to visit the circus,” Michael says, idly, and Martin chokes on a string of cheese. He gropes for his tea and takes a large gulp. Michael looks unconcerned by the hacking sounds. “All I found were the useless ones. They had nothing helpful to say before I unmade them.”

Martin says, trying to sound indifferent, “Were you…trying to help me?”

Martin isn’t good at indifferent.

“Myself,” it says. “You.” And then, “Is that good?”

He swallows another especially cheesy bite. This time he doesn’t choke on it. “I think so. I mean, I’m not the best cook in the world, but it tastes fine and it’s not undercooked.”

A pause. Michael stares at him.

“Undercooked eggs are dangerous.” He feels warm, stupidly defensive, embarrassed. “There’s…salmonella?”

Oh, for heaven’s _sake_. It might be smiling, is wearing the expression he’s been translating as a smile, but he hasn’t worked out yet if Michael’s face has the same understanding of expression that everyone else’s does. Michael Shelley, he was smiling in one of the photographs Martin found, a reassuring, easy little smile; this one’s less reassuring, as it may not be a smile and Martin cannot trust anything that might be behind it. If it is smiling, maybe Michael smiles at its prey before it pounces on them. It might not be so bad to be pounced on. He bites down on his tongue. Just because Jon doesn’t want him, doesn’t mean he’s got to start thinking about Michael.

And now he’s rambling to it about salmonella. It doesn’t actually seem that put off.

“D’you eat?” he says, finally.

“Oh, yes,” it says, still smiling. Still possibly smiling.

“Do I want to ask what?”

Its smile grows wider. “Oh, no.”

Martin has a drink of tea. He says, “Not cryptic at all,” into his cup.

Michael laughs. The sound hurts Martin’s teeth, but he finds himself smiling back at it, almost shyly. It stops laughing, appearing to study his face, and his smile fades. This is probably the part where it does eat him.

“Do that again,” it says, practically a demand, half-risen from its chair in a way that disagrees with how it looks like it’s still fully seated. It’s leaning toward him though, that’s undeniable.

Martin jumps, nearly sloshing tea out of his cup. He brings it closer to his chest, cradling it like a precious antique. Bad enough Michael wastes his tea, now it’ll have him making a mess with it himself. There aren’t a lot of things Martin is especially fastidious about, but his tea is usually one of the few. “Do what again?”

“Martin,” Michael says, and Martin thinks there’s something nearly accusatory in it, and he’s too bewildered to have any idea why. “I like the way you were looking at me.”

Martin blinks. That’s…not what he expected. He has few enough expectations when it comes to Michael, but it—wants him to smile at it? All right, then. He pushes hair out of his face, conscious of how messy it is, and lets his lips quirk. It’s stared at him every time it’s come to call, but he thinks there’s something different in its aspect this time. It’s not predatory—he doesn’t think so, anyway. It is focused. On his mouth.

His stomach turns. No, it doesn’t turn, though he wishes he could pretend it had done. His stomach _flips_ , feels like butterflies; again.

Michael’s almost certainly smiling back at him. He doesn’t imagine it can be doing anything else. He stands abruptly, and says an exasperated, “If you’re not going to drink that, give it here,” which makes him feel a little better. Except Michael proffers him the cup, and as he drinks, he thinks, for reasons he chooses to sidestep, that his mouth is touching where its has been.

“Martin,” it says, and he announces, “I’m going to have a shower,” and drains both cups, and makes a hasty retreat.

When he returns, still toweling off his hair, Michael has gone. He’s not disappointed. What would he do with a monster in his flat all day? Ask if it wants to watch a film? No, it’s good that it hasn’t stayed long enough for there to be any need for him to entertain it. He supposes it’s entertained by him as he is. The thought is a worrying one that he likes more than he should.

That’s worrying, too.


	6. Chapter 6

Sunday begins with a slow, yawning shuffle.

Martin has no plans, aside from lounging about his flat in sweatpants and maybe fiddling around with a poem. If he’s feeling especially adventurous, he’ll go and treat himself to lunch. There’s every chance the world will end soon; if ever there was a time to treat himself, these are the circumstances. He drops his clothes in a heap on the bathroom floor and steps into the shower.

Lazy Sundays, he thinks ruefully, were much more tenable before the end of the world became the sort of issue  _he_  had to worry about, personally. Outside of the abstract.

He can’t imagine what Jon’s weekends look like anymore. He can’t imagine Jon bothers to take weekends. Maybe he should stop doing so himself. Surely preventing the Unknowing is more important than having two days to himself, outside of the—

Martin frowns, hands lathering in his hair. The water’s hot as it’ll go, and it must be getting to his head, because he’d just nearly thought of the Archive as ‘the Eye’s dreadful little temple.’ Too much time with a certain monster in his life, obviously. Why is there more than one monster in his life? Actually, why are there any?  _Most people_  haven’t got any.

“Lucky, lucky me,” he mumbles, and tries to go back to thinking about his lack of plans for the day. It…doesn’t work well. If the walls in this building weren’t so abysmally thin, he’d take up singing in the shower; he settles for reciting every Robert Frost poem he can think of.

(In the end, he recites ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ three times over. The rhymes are nice.)

(Also, he can’t recall any others offhand.)

The fan in his bathroom hasn’t worked properly for a year and he hasn’t wanted to bother the landlord with it, leaving the room muggy and uncomfortable at the end of his shower. He towels off and dresses, and draws a smiley face on the mirror before opening the cabinet to take out his toothpaste. He’s spitting into the sink when a lilting voice says, “Hello, Martin.”

This time Martin doesn’t even jump. It’s no more surprising for Michael to appear in his bathroom than his kitchen, the park, the Archive. He didn’t feel its eyes on him when he stood under the water; at least it waited until his clothes were on. He spits again, drops his toothbrush back into its cup, and says, “Have you set out to turn my life into a series of jump scares?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” He turns to find its brow furrowed, and wonders if it knows what the expression means, or is merely imitating him. It’s gotten that reaction from him more than once. More surprising than its arrival in his bathroom is— “Two days in a row now?”

He doesn’t mean to say it aloud. It just sort of slips out. At least it does so casually, he tells himself. More curious than eager. Not eager at all, except for the treacherous part of him that is pleased to have it here.

“Have you missed me?” Michael asks.

“I just saw you yesterday,” Martin points out. “I think you missed me, actually.”

It says a little, “Ha,” but doesn’t disagree with him. He wishes it would. If it misses him, it might choose to take him with it when it goes, and there’s plenty of its corridors left in his dreams. “When I’m away longer, do you miss me then?”

Martin scoops the clothes he slept in from their place, still abandoned beside the shower. “I don’t—I wouldn’t say I miss you.”

(He does, and missing it makes him nervous. But he won’t say so. He’s not lying to Michael, just omitting.)

“I sort of like having you around,” he concedes. “It’s nice to have company.”

“Yes,” Michael agrees. “It is.”

It approaches him, its gait smooth and with a predatory fluidity Martin associates primarily with wildcats. He watches, his arms full of laundry. He doesn’t know what he expects to happen when it reaches him. Not for it to push the shower curtain open. Not for it to run a curious finger through the condensation on the wall before its hands go to the handle.

“How does this device work?” it asks.

“Er.” Martin leans forward, sticking his arm out between the wall and Michael’s chest, and twists the handle. The water that sprays out is closer to lukewarm than hot. “You don’t—d’you even bathe?”

“I have no need.” It holds both hands open beneath the water. “You stand here and…what?”

“Soap for your body,” he says, gesturing halfheartedly. Its fingers would destroy his bar soap. “Shampoo for your hair. You’d usually take your clothes off.”

His cheeks pink at the thought. It’s ridiculous. But Michael’s got a slim frame and Martin can’t help imagining what its body might look like beneath the green sweater and denim it always wears. He wonders how it chose them, if it chose them at all, or if Michael Shelley did and it has been wearing them ever since. The thought makes him ill. That’s one way to  _not_  think about its sweater coming off.

It doesn’t matter: Michael steps into the shower without removing a single article.

Martin is surprised, and then wonders why he’s bothering with the feeling. Michael reaches for the bar of soap, frowning at it when it slips away from its fingers. He might stay to watch, but now the sweater is  _clinging_  and that’s really, really not helpful, not one bit. What’s it look like underneath? Is the body Michael Shelley’s? Is it sharp somehow? Maybe it’s something he wouldn’t even recognize as part of a body. But the rest of it looks human enough, except for those hands. Has it got the parts he’d expect it to have?

“Right,” he says, unwilling to continue down this road of thinking, “you just have fun, I suppose.”

He turns on his heel and goes, pulling the door shut behind him. He stands there a moment, listening to the water, until he hears something clattering about. Probably Michael grappling with the soap. He shakes his head and walks away. It’s the work of a second to throw his clothes in the dirty laundry basket.

So much for a quiet Sunday. Maybe Michael will disappear as soon as it’s finished messing about in the shower. It never stays long.

Martin wanders back down the hall, musing on what sounds good for breakfast. Maybe oatmeal. He’s reached the kitchen when he realizes there’s something  _off_  in his flat. More than the monster in his bathroom. (The monster in his bathroom is quickly becoming a rather ordinary aspect of his flat, though it shouldn’t be.)

_Please let it be my imagination._

It won’t have been. Things so rarely are anymore, if they ever were. He’s begun to think his childhood fears were wholly justified. After all, there  _are_ monsters in the shadows, and out of them too. The center of his palm burns when he thinks of it.

Sure enough, there’s a yellow door beside the television. Set there without so much as a by-your-leave. Martin puffs his cheeks out on an inhale and blows out a long, slow breath till they’ve deflated again. Michael must have decided it  _is_  going to make a habit of this. Of him. The thought does several odd things to his insides, some more trustworthy than others.

“Tea,” Martin mutters. “I need tea for this.”

He fixes himself a cup of black tea, not bothering with cream or milk or sugar; he needs it as strong as possible.

Then he pours a second cup; the thing occupying itself in his flat will only complain if he doesn’t.

But he returns to the living room to drink it, staring at Michael’s door all the while. The door it tricked him through, with Tim, when they might have been helping Jon. He sits before the trembling of his legs makes him fall. Michael might lead him through that door again. It isn’t to be trusted.

His cup is empty, held in shaking hands, when Michael comes squelching into the room. It announces, “I have finished my shower.”

Martin forces his eyes from the door. Michael appears to have given the shampoo a go, but didn’t bother with rinsing it out at all; its hair is plastered to its face in some places and half-stood at ridiculous angles in others. Suds streak across its sweater and jeans. It’s dripping all over his floor, and its door is still directly across from him.

“Michael,” he says, fully aware that he sounds more frightened than its first visit to him. His heart is pounding its fastest.

“Martin.” It studies him, blinking water from its eyes. Not tears, just the water dripping down from its hair. “Is something the matter?”

“Your door is in my flat.” His voice is very small.

“Yes,” Michael says, evidently failing to see the problem with this.

“Why? I don’t want—” Martin pulls his legs onto the couch with him. He swallows. “I don’t like it.”

“There’s nothing to worry about.” It appears to think on its answer. “My door is nothing to worry about.” It thinks, again. “My door is nothing for  _you_  to worry about. I don’t intend to take you through it.”

“Then why is it here?”

“Because I am here,” Michael says. “Would you like me to go?”

“No,” Martin says, and forces himself to breathe. It doesn’t intend to take him through the door. He doesn’t know why believing it comes so easily, and it’s probably a mistake; he knows Michael is a liar, Michael is in many ways a lie, but right now Michael also looks absurd. He gives it another looking over and this time, he laughs. “I’m not sure you have finished your shower.”

“I have,” it insists, and he’s imagining the relief there, because he must be.

“Then you’re not very good at it.” Martin sets his empty cup down and stands to go to it. He tries (unsuccessfully) to ignore the door. He tries (even harder, even less successfully) to ignore the lovely dip in the hollow of its throat where a rivulet of water runs its way down. (There’s no use, by the time he comes to it, in pretending he doesn’t want to lick it off. He doesn’t, though. Obviously.) He lifts one hand toward its hair, but stops himself before he’s made contact. “You don’t leave the shampoo in.”

“It was my first time,” Michael says haughtily, “and you did not stay to show me.”

Martin looks away from it. “The shampoo bottle has instructions. You can read, can’t you?”

“I can. There didn’t seem a need.” Michael runs one hand through its own hair and gives the resulting suds an approving nod.

“You look ridiculous,” he says.

Rather than answer him, Michael moves toward the couch.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Martin practically shrieks. “You can’t sit on my furniture!”

“Can’t I?” Michael looks between Martin and the furniture in question.

“No! You’re drenched!”

Michael laughs. It hasn’t yet sat. It  _has_  tracked water about more of his floor. “Is that all? I was unaware you were so afraid of water, Martin.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” he says, and as it begins to lower itself, “Don’t. You. Dare.”

“What will you do?” Michael sounds genuinely interested in his answer. It’s stopped with its rear over one cushion, drip, drip, dripping away.

Martin makes an exasperated sound. There’s not much he can do to stop Michael doing whatever it likes, but this is his flat and that’s his shabby secondhand couch and he prefers it not soak the poor old thing through. He sets his hands on his hips, no doubt looking as ridiculous as Michael does, attempting to stand up to a monster. (It doesn’t feel like proper standing up, given the situation.) “I won’t be happy with you, I can tell you that.”

He expects it to laugh at him again.

He expects it to disregard him and sit anyway.

It says, “We can’t have that, now can we.”

It smiles, and straightens. “May I have a towel, Martin?”

Martin considers its hands, slicing through grass and his skin. “You’ll shred it.”

Its hands are easier to consider than its changed mind at the suggestion he would be displeased with it.

“I won’t.”

“Can’t you just…” He gestures vaguely, wiggles his fingers a little like it’s any kind of contribution. “I dunno,  _perceive_  yourself dry? I’m no expert, but it sounds easier than perceiving my skin back together.”

(Sometimes, the words that come out of his mouth take him aback.)

“I would like a towel,” it says, much the same way it said it would like his tea. It’s not even going to use it, then.

“Of course you would.” Martin sighs and half-stomps his way back to the bathroom.

He flings the towel at its face. If it chooses now to kill him, at least he’ll have that.

It says nothing, only rubs the towel over its face and hair until those blond waves are at least all lying down again. It’s difficult to tell if it’s damaging his towel. When it hands it back to him, far more politely than he threw it, the fabric is marked full of tiny holes.

“Your clothes are still wet,” he says. “Are you really just going to—”

He snaps his mouth shut, as it had been heading for ‘leave them on,’ and if the alternative is ‘take them off’ he doesn’t want to put that thought in its head. It might strip down right here.

 _That wouldn’t be the worst thing,_  says a part of him.

 _If it were human,_  he shoots back.

_You still like Jon._

_That_   _’s—different._

Michael interrupts the argument he’s carrying on with himself. “You won’t let me sit down unless I’m dry.”

“I don’t like wet furniture.” Martin considers the implications of its use of ‘let.’ It knows as well as he does he can’t stop it. But it’s listening to him. He tamps down on a misplaced smugness. It’s doing whatever amuses it. “And the towel’s not going to do the trick, so—”

“All right,” Michael says, and just like that, it’s dry. The floor remains marked by its footprints.

Martin purses his lips. “You couldn’t just do that before? I  _asked_  if you could perceive yourself dry.”

“I wanted a towel,” it says, as if it’s that simple.

“Sure.” Martin throws his hands in the air, no matter there’s still a wet towel clutched in one of them. “You can occupy yourself, if you’re going to stay. I made you tea, and it’s probably too cool by now, but that doesn’t matter because you’re not going to drink it anyway.”

Oh, god, now he’s rambling at it. He scurries from the room before he can embarrass himself further. Michael probably wouldn’t recognize his embarrassment, but that’s not the point. He leaves the towel to the basket and returns to the living room.

Michael has placed itself on his preferred end of the couch. It has watched him enough to know where he usually sits, but there it is, full teacup primly held to its mouth. Having the decency to pretend. Does it expect him to remark on any of this? Does Michael have expectations at all?

He ignores it in favor of fetching his laptop and curling up at the opposite end of the couch to fall down the rabbit hole of the Internet without any destination in mind.

The thing is—Michael.

Fifteen minutes tick by. Half an hour. A full hour.

Martin knows what it feels like to be watched by it, and its eyes have not moved from him since he took his place. Ten minutes into the second hour, when he’s reading a film gossip column in an effort to make the world feel normal (and realizing he has no idea who any of these people are), he sets his laptop aside and fidgets at the curl of its lips. He sounds more flustered than he likes. “Is there something you need, Michael? You’re the one staring at me this time.”

“I don’t usually take the time to look at humans,” it says.

“You’ve spent a lot of time looking at me.”

“Yes,” it agrees.

“You might have chosen a better looking one,” Martin says before he’s thought better of it.

“Is there something wrong with the way you look?” Michael’s head tilts. “I like your stars.”

“My stars?” Martin echoes, puzzling over this. Then, with a dawning realization, he touches his face. “You mean the freckles.”

He’s never liked them much, himself. There are too many by far and they make him look about twelve years old.

“Freckles,” Michael says, like the word is unfamiliar to it.

Martin doesn’t see it move. One moment it sits at the other end of the couch. The next, it’s beside him, leaning forward, one hand much too close to his face. He recalls its second appearance in the Archive, the way it traced one finger down his face, almost curious, he thinks, to see how he might react to it. He hadn’t screamed. He hasn’t screamed once at its touch. Hasn’t so much as whimpered. It’s studying his freckles and the rest of his face, finger moving terribly, unbearably close to his skin in a little pattern like it’s playing a game of connect-the-dots. There’s a twinge of pain in the line it left along his cheek, one he may be imagining.

“Last time,” he says, feeling oddly casual, “you went an entire visit without cutting me.”

“Would you like me to?” It sounds like an offer, and Martin’s first instinct is not to say no. He should say no.

“I—” He swallows, closing his hand to feel the place where it wrecked his palm. Three times it has left its mark on him. He shouldn’t want a fourth. (But he does, a little. It isn’t the pain he likes. It’s knowing that something has chosen him. Michael has chosen him.)

Michael does not continue to wait for an answer. Its finger bites into his face, just beside his right eye. It doesn’t go deep, and for several long seconds it doesn’t move—he meets its eyes, pleased that his breath remains steady—until it draws a curving line toward his ear and he feels the faintest trickle down his face.

“Very good,” Michael says, almost gently, and Martin feels a completely unreasonable urge to thread his fingers through its hair. Its finger comes away glistening red. He should be more concerned than he is (not very concerned at all, really) that that’s his blood, there on its fingertip.

Michael doesn’t look away from him when it licks its finger clean.

Martin’s breath does catch at that. He fumbles for words. “That’s…that’s not sanitary.”

Oh, yes. Not sanitary. That’s the problem with this situation.

The monster in his flat laughs.

“Martin,” it says, pushing in closer to him, till its mouth is close enough to be tickled by his breath if he weren’t holding it, “I do miss you when I’m gone.”

And then, bafflingly, Michael levers off of him and slinks through its door, which creaks and remains set in his wall. He’d thought (again) it might kiss him. (He’d thought he might not stop it.) Most likely it just—doesn’t understand social conventions. That it’s not really polite to put your mouth that close to somebody else’s unless they’ve invited you there. It certainly doesn’t care that it hasn’t been invited in.

“It isn’t to be trusted,” he reminds himself.

But he likes the way it looks at him, sometimes.

And it likes his freckles.

Martin Blackwood buries his face in his hands and thinks he must be very stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ps if you're reading this weirdo rarepair fic that I'm super invested in...you're the best, honestly?


	7. Chapter 7

The yellow door remains set in Martin’s living room wall come Monday morning.

He calls, “Michael?” and is unsurprised when there’s no answer. It wouldn’t surprise him if there was one, either. He’s beginning to get used to Michael’s unpredictability.

Martin studies the door for several minutes while sipping his morning tea. He’s been too afraid of the thing to take a proper look, but now he takes his time with it. It looks like a perfectly ordinary door, like you might open it and find a closet, except it goes sort of wavy ‘round the edges. The paint is chipped in a few places, as though the elements have had their way with it, the doorknob gleaming. The longer he looks, the harder it is to keep his eyes open.

In the end he wrenches his eyes away, muttering several impolite things about fractals. The door doesn’t belong there; he doesn’t completely hate seeing it.

_Would you like me to go?_

There had been another fear there, when Michael asked him that. Beneath the wave of terror that it might drag him kicking, screaming and helpless through its door, laughing all the while at his pleas, there was the fear that it would do as he asked. If he said yes, it would disappear and not come back. It’s stupid. There’s a chance it won’t come back  _every_  time it goes, and that’s what he’d hoped for the first time it visited him in the Archive, and that’s what he should still be hoping for, he  _should_  have wanted it to go, but here he is: so company-starved he’s reduced to wanting the company of a proper monster.

The door is still there, when he walks out of the proper one.

Martin casts several looks over his shoulder on the way to the Institute. It’s not entirely paranoia, and it would be inaccurate to say it’s fear that has him looking to begin with. There’s no sense of Michael’s eyes on him. He wonders what it does with all of its time.

_D_ _’you eat?_

_Oh, yes._

_Do I want to ask what?_

_Oh, no._

It’s probably for the best he doesn’t know where it goes or what it does.

Besides, Michael is free to do whatever it likes. It has no obligations to him. Only—it has  _told_  him he’s the only human it’s interested in. That shouldn’t feel as good as it does.

Martin isn’t the first to arrive this morning. Basira is already at her desk, idly turning the page of whatever it is she’s reading now (the woman goes through books like a student on a deadline, and it’s rendered all the more impressive by how much attention she seems to give each page), Melanie is yawning over a cup of coffee, and Jon is muttering too quietly to be intelligible as he drags his finger along a row of boxes.

There’s no sign of Tim.

“G’morning,” Martin says en route to his desk, not expecting much of a response; everyone seems rather absorbed in what they’re doing.

Sure enough, Basira lifts one hand without looking up and Jon makes a sound of acknowledgment he supposes qualifies as a greeting, depending on one’s definition. Melanie, though, has a drink of coffee, says, “Welcome back to the nightmare,” and does a proper double-take.

“What?” He’s suddenly self-conscious.

“’What?’ Did you upset another cat?” she says, and without even thinking about it Martin raises a hand to the new mark on his face.

Michael hadn’t fixed this one yesterday, and he’d been too caught off-guard by its sudden departure to notice until after the fact, when he lifted his face from his hands and found several fingers daubed with blood. He’d splashed water over it and been left with a thin line to keep the first company. If Michael’s not careful with him, he’s going to resemble a completed jigsaw.

“Yeah,” he says after a too long beat of silence. “There’re a lot of strays around my building. It’s a real problem.”

“Sure.” Melanie raises her eyebrows and he hates whatever’s going to come out of her mouth before he’s heard it. “Far be it from me to judge you for how you spend your personal time. Do what you have to to cope with this and all.”

“ _What?_ ” Martin’s voice pitches higher. He feels the flush creeping up his skin. “It’s nothing like that.”

Maybe it is, though. Not exactly in the way Melanie is implying. It’s not  _sexual_ , this thing with Michael. Not that there  _is_  a thing with Michael. (But there is a thing with Michael, whether or not he knows how to define it. Michael is the sort of thing that cannot be pinned down, that eludes the best attempts at definition.)

Martin’s eyes flick toward Jon, whose attention is still on the boxes; he’s pulled one of them out for a better look at its contents. Having a thing with Michael doesn’t mean discussing it with his coworkers. He says, “It was a cat.”

“Whatever you say,” Melanie says, her own unique brand of chipper and sardonic. “I hope it’s a good-looking cat.”

“Melanie.” There’s a strained edge to Jon’s voice. “Leave Martin alone.”

The order catches Martin nearly as off-guard as Michael’s behavior. Evidently it surprises Melanie too, because she frowns, but repeats, “Whatever you say,” this time tacking a derisive “boss” onto the end.

Martin isn’t sure if he should say thank you, if Jon’s done that for him or for his own sake. He settles on a grateful look in Jon’s direction, and finds Jon studying him as well, some combination of polite concern and curiosity. Ordinarily he’d like to have Jon’s attention on him. Now he isn’t sure how he feels. His feelings for Jon are hardly  _gone_ , but there’s a confusing tangle in his head courtesy of Michael.

Several hours of mindless filing pass before the phone on his desk rings. He reaches for it without looking up from the statement that’s got him frowning and wondering if its writer is at all familiar with popular ghost stories, as one of their friends was clearly running a lengthy prank built on ‘The Cold Hand.’ “Hi, Rosie, what is it?”

“Can you come up here?” she says. “There’s a woman here to make a statement. I tried to record her myself, but it isn’t really taking.”

One of those, then. Just what they need today.

“Sure,” he says. “Be right there.”

The rest of the Institute staff don’t make their way down to the Archive if they can help it, avoiding the basement nearly as doggedly as plenty of them avoid Artefact Storage. Martin doesn’t fault anybody for either. He asks Basira to let Jon know he’s bringing somebody down and then jogs up the stairs, slowing when he comes in sight of Rosie’s desk.

A stick-thin woman with a river of auburn hair waits there, her arms clutched around a cardboard box. She’d be absolutely lovely if not for the sharp, angry wounds marring her face. It’s difficult to say what might have made them—maybe a knife? The rest of her skin is hidden by fabric, and he wonders if she’s got them in other places, too.

Rosie’s smiling reassuringly at her, promising they’ll do their best to help. They will, of course, but there’s no making promises about anything around here. She notices him before the woman does and says, “Here he is, love.”

“Hello,” Martin says, putting on a forcedly cheerful tone. He decides against extending a hand for her to shake, as she’s pulling the box closer to her chest. “My name’s Martin, Rosie probably mentioned. I’ll just be taking you down to our Archivist. Do you want me to carry that for you?”

_Please say no._

“Anna,” the woman says, her voice streaked through with exhaustion. She gives him a hesitant look. “You wouldn’t want to carry this.”

“It’s no trouble,” he says, though it probably is. If her statement wouldn’t take for Rosie’s computer and she’s holding onto this box…he’s not an idiot. She doesn’t protest any more as he takes it from her, shoulders visibly sagging with relief.

He glances down to see what’s inside: a birdhouse. It’s an extravagant one, built like something out of the Victorian era, multiple levels, painted a cracked, peeling eggshell blue. Any bird would probably see it as living the high life.

Martin escorts Anna downstairs, right into Jon’s office, where the tape recorder is ready and waiting.

(But they often are, now, whether they’ve set them up to be or not.)

“What’s in the box?” Melanie asks when he’s closing the office door behind him.

“A birdhouse.” He hadn’t noticed anything odd while carrying it, but he hadn’t really been focused on the thing, busy as he was saying encouraging platitudes to Anna.

“A haunted birdhouse?” Basira sounds curious. She’s been to Artefact Storage a few times, he knows, more fascinated by it than afraid. Comes from being a police officer, he expects.

“I dunno.” Martin shrugs. “Most likely?”

“That was a big box for a birdhouse.”

“Maybe it’s for really posh birds,” Melanie says, and Martin manages a laugh, Basira a grin.

Anna stays in Jon’s office for the better part of an hour. Once, Martin is sure he hears chirping, but it doesn’t look like anybody else does. He looks up when the door opens. Jon is escorting Anna out; her shoulders shake, but she looks like a weight’s been lifted. Good for her. He hopes it genuinely has. She gives him a little smile on her way out; the number of witnesses who have passed away following their statements hangs heavy on his mind.

“Martin,” Jon says once the Archive door’s creaked shut after her, “come here a moment.”

Martin does as asked, blinking when Jon shuts the office door. He watches Jon sit on the edge of his desk beside the left-behind box.

“I’d like you to take this up to Artefact Storage. The practical researchers are welcome to it, but we have enough problems of our own in the Archive already.”

Martin nods and starts across the office. Surely Jon didn’t close the door just for that. “Do you need anything else? I can fix tea on my way back down.”

“That would be nice,” Jon says, and a look Martin would almost call diffident comes over his face. (Except it’s Jon, so he wouldn’t. Just—almost.) “I’m sorry I’ve been so absent as of late. I haven’t been available and it’s not fair to the rest of you, my being constantly in and out and not taking the time to check in here—”

“It’s fine,” Martin starts. “You’re busy and what you’re doing is important.”

Jon looks momentarily pained. “Yes, I know. Please let me finish. The Unknowing is my primary concern, but it is not my  _only_  concern. I’m still responsible for what happens in the Archive. For all of you. I asked before if things were all right here, but I didn’t ask about you, specifically.” His eyes linger on Martin’s face. “Is there anything you need to discuss with me?”

“Jon,” Martin says. He feels Jon’s questions now, like the Archivist’s voice tugging him by the hand. A small piece of him says,  _Monster_ ; he tells that piece to piss off. He worries at his lower lip, still feeling that mental pull. But Jon asked if there’s anything he needs to discuss. He doesn’t  _need_  to discuss Michael with Jon, not yet, not today. “If this is about what Melanie said, it’s really nothing to—”

“This is because I’m worried about what might be happening while I’m away, or distracted. I don’t want you to feel you have to…” A sigh and, “Shoulder it alone. I’m trying to do better by all of you.”

He doesn’t have to say he still feels guilty about his prior paranoia. It’s written all over him.

Martin swallows.  _There’s a monster hanging out in my flat,_  he thinks.  _It likes when I smile at it._

Jon won’t be able to do anything about it, and there’s no use worrying him, and he  _would_  worry, and—Martin sees Michael with its hair wet and stuck up at stupid angles, with its hands around a cup of tea, lying down beside him in a sunny spot of grass, and feels an echo of sensation in the center of his palm.

“No,” he says. “There’s nothing. Just the street cats. They’re a real nuisance.”

Jon looks unconvinced. Martin makes a mental note to ask Michael to please leave his face alone or at  _least_  perceive the next one back to normal—and stops a moment to absorb that this is a thought he’s actually entertaining. He jerks himself free of it (this really isn’t the time) and grabs the box.

“Martin, you will tell me if anything changes? If there’s something I can do to make this situation any…” Jon rubs at his temple. “Less horrid?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, ‘course I will.” He adjusts his grip on the box and makes for the door. He stops there, and looks back at Jon, who hasn’t moved, who looks worn down and far away, and he clears his throat, which draws Jon’s eyes up from the floor. “I just want you to know, um, you don’t have to shoulder everything alone either. Sort of the whole point of assistants. I’ll let you know if I find anything of use.”

Jon gives him a weary smile. “Thank you, Martin.”

“I’ll just nip this upstairs and be back with that tea, then,” Martin says, and balances the box awkwardly on his leg to make it through the door.

It’s something of a relief to find Melanie and Basira have disappeared from the Archive in his absence. Probably up to the library, at least Basira, and maybe she convinced Melanie to go along with her. Either way, it spares him their questions.

Martin navigates his way up the stairs and along the Institute corridor, his shoes scuffing on the dark hardwood. The scent of damp wood and turning leaves wafts up from within the box. Martin’s nose twitches, and he thinks even as he’s looking down that he should know better. Really, he should have covered the box with something, but he’s only delivering it to become somebody else’s problem.

A flash of movement in a birdhouse window catches his eye. He stops.

“No, no, don’t do that,” he mumbles for his own ears, and forces himself along the hall. It’s quiet, Rosie’s desk far enough back toward the front of the building he can’t hear her, and everyone else in the Institute seems to be sequestered away within their department for the moment. Neither are there any additional eyes upon him, not the thing that watches in the Archive and not Michael. Martin is alone with the birdhouse. He chances another glance down.

Something  _is_  looking at him. Its eyes are beady and gleaming and then gone. He smells something like wet earth, and then that’s gone, too.

 _It’s my imagination. I’m just nervous because of that woman bringing it in._  He remembers the violent hole torn through her cheek and shudders.  _If anything happens, I_ will _say something to Jon._

But for the rest of the day, nothing does happen. He signs the birdhouse into the custody of Artefact Storage and passes a slow day of research at his desk. His walk home is uneventful, for which he’s equal parts grateful (no misplaced smells or eyes or genuinely birdlike sensations) and disappointed (no Michael, either). He chides himself for the second part, though it’s half-hearted.

The fact he shouldn’t want its company doesn’t seem to be stopping him so far.

The first thing he notices when he enters his flat, hair and skin and clothes damp from the light rain that started up halfway from the station, is the perfectly still, person-shaped thing sat in his armchair. It would have alarmed him once, but now it comes as little surprise. Michael hasn’t been waiting for him all day, has it? It knows full well he spends his daytime hours at the Institute.

It waits for him to abandon his messenger bag and walk into the living room to say, “Hello, Martin.”

“How long have you been sitting there?” Martin sweeps his arm up the wall till he locates the switch.

Michael makes a vague, noncommittal gesture, its eyes roaming him from head to toe and back, narrowing slightly as they do. “I don’t know. Time is useless to me.”

Martin rolls his eyes, making his way toward the kitchen. His stomach gurgles its approval before he’s gotten the fridge open. “Yeah, okay.”

He collects the makings of a chicken salad, all of it easily thrown together in a bowl. He hasn’t got the energy for actual cooking this evening. To his surprise, Michael doesn’t follow him to ask for some of what he’s having, though he feels it watching; there’s a wall in between, but that hasn’t stopped it before, and it’s nearly a comfort, having those eyes on him.

Martin returns to the living room, salad bowl in hand, and stops a moment to just…take in what he’s looking at. It hasn’t changed in the last few minutes, but very recently he’d have been horrified by the scene. Michael sat in the chair, hands folded in its lap, yellow wood door in his wall. Even now it’s unsettling, makes his heart pound faster, but it doesn’t make him want to run screaming from the flat.

(He wonders, a little, how far Michael would let him get before it pounced on him.)

(He wonders, a little, what it would be like to have Michael pounce on him.)

(He’s glad, more than a little, that Michael cannot see into his head.)

(He hopes, more than a little, he’s right about that.)

Michael looks back at him, unblinking.

“Right,” Martin says around a whole cherry tomato. “I’m just going to…I’ll be over here.”

His flat isn’t especially well-furnished—certainly nothing  _matches_ —but neither is it completely barren. There’s a lot to be done from secondhand shops, and along with the couch and chair and coffee table, he’s got a faded writing desk probably as old as he is, which bends warningly when he sets too much weight on it, and an unmatched desk chair that creaks at the slightest provocation.

He settles down at the desk, shushing the chair when it complains at him, and pulls a composition book toward himself. It’s been a while since he’s taken the time to write any poetry, distracted as he’s been by both Michael and the Unknowing.

He doesn’t intend to write about Michael. But as he sits, exchanging fork for pen and pen for fork (and once, accidentally scritching fork to paper), he finds himself jotting down notes about blond curls and unsettling, incorrect smiles, and razor-sharp fingers while it sits quietly behind him.

At least, for a little while it sits quietly. There are footsteps, and before he’s twisted around to look, Michael is directly behind him. It crowds him up against the desk, bending over him in an unnatural way, too tall and not-bent-enough for its face to be this close, its arms bracketing him in.

“Michael,” he says, his voice weak, “nobody’s ever taught you about personal space, have they?”

It makes a dismissive sound and nods to his paper, and he feels the blood rushing to his face as he fights the urge to shove his incomplete poem out of sight. “What are you doing, Martin?”

“It’s poetry.” Martin’s fingers tighten around his pen. He’s just written a rather embarrassing (in retrospect) stanza about its face caught in the sunlight and he would very much like to crawl beneath the desk and stay there until Michael leaves.

“I have never read poetry,” Michael says.

“You shouldn’t start with mine,” Martin says. “You can look at some of my books the next time you decide to sit here and wait for me to get home, but turn a light on if you’re going to read or you’ll strain your eye— _would_  you strain your eyes, or is that not a problem for you?”

“I do not rely on light.” Michael leans impossibly closer; its hair tickles at his skin, and if he turned his face, just a little, he might catch its mouth. The thought makes him squirm more than its breath on his face, except—except its breath  _isn’t_  on his face because Michael  _doesn’t breathe_  only pretends to because  _Michael is a monster_  and he shouldn’t be thinking of kissing it. “Martin.”

“Yes?” Martin swallows. All thoughts of kissing have fled for the moment. His voice pitches, indignant and baffled. “Are you  _sniffing_  me?”

Michael’s nose pushes against his cheek and the sound it makes is  _like_  breathing. It says, “There is something on you. Not your master.” It makes that sound again, nose sliding up toward his ear. “Not me, either. What did you do today, Martin?”

“I didn’t do anything?” He wishes it would move away, give him space to think instead of surrounding him like this.

“You must have done something.”

“I lied about you again,” he says, and it laughs, and there he goes, thinking about grabbing it by the chin and turning its face so he can—

“That was good of you,” Michael says, “but it wouldn’t make you smell like this.”

“So that’s a yes to sniffing me, then.” Martin shuts his eyes. He’d rather not puzzle over how a thing can smell at all without breathing. Or maybe it can choose to breathe, if it wants to? “I carried an evil birdfeeder upstairs? But I only had it for a minute.”

The sound it makes is difficult to describe, low and irritated and he would almost say territorial, all of which is alarming, but not nearly as alarming as the way it grips the back of his chair and drags it to swing him around, the chair making an unholy sound of protest. “The Archivist placed you in the path of rot a second time.”

Martin’s stomach rolls for several reasons. “That’s not—I mean, Jon didn’t—I’m fine—”

Michael doesn’t appear to be listening to him. Something fully unreadable crosses its face (not that he can read its face the majority of the time) and Martin only just stops himself throwing his hands up as a poor excuse for a shield when it leans in anew, showing off white teeth in a sneer, and says, “There is nothing for you here, this one is more than taken,” and he doesn't think Michael is addressing him.

Sharp fingers dig into his forearm, tearing through his skin. There’s no warning and it’s much more painful than any of Michael’s prior cuts, and Martin bites down on a curse, but he can't help the gasp, nor the tears that spring to his eyes. (Nor the rush of blood from his face, in more unfortunate directions. Thankfully  _that_  portion of his response is as comparatively muted as the rest.)

“Ah, ah. Hush,” Michael says, and this  _is_  to Martin, as it sinks to its knees in front of him. Michael brushes a finger over his mouth, not hard enough to break skin. It meets his eyes and cocks its head to one side. “Should I say I’m sorry this time?”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” Martin manages. He wants to cradle his arm, but Michael hasn’t let go, its fingers still quite literally inside of him. “What was that for?”

“Protection.” Now Michael pulls its hand free, all of them coated in a layer of blood, the sight of which makes him dizzy. It studies its handiwork with apparent satisfaction, running those fingers over his arm and making him a greater mess, and Martin’s struggle to breathe is for, he thinks, the wrong reasons. “And a warning. They often go hand-in-hand.”

“D’you mean—is this about the birdhouse?”

Something like cruel amusement twists its mouth. “Yes.”

“Okay,” Martin says, his arm beginning to throb, too painful to ignore. “Are you going to leave me like this?”

“It would be stronger.” Michael’s fingers still rest on his skin. “But it should be enough, no matter.”

There’s blood enough that Martin can’t see the wounds perceiving their way to gone, only feels the receding of the pain.

“Martin,” Michael says, and he makes a sound to say he’s listening, but it doesn’t go on till he looks from his arm to its face. “My apologies, for hurting you.”

“Oh.” Martin looks away again, this time toward the window, where he can watch the rain, grown stronger since he left it. He shouldn’t be thinking half the things he is. He’s quite sure Michael’s not romantically interested in him. Michael’s probably not familiar with romantic interest to begin with. It’s just—well, Martin hasn’t the faintest idea  _what_  Michael is here for. So it enjoys his company, but what does that mean to something like Michael? “I should probably go and clean up.”

“I can clean it for you.”

There’s something untrustworthy in Michael’s eyes, but there always is, and Martin finds himself saying, “Yes, all right.”

Michael bows its head to lick a strip up his arm. Martin makes a strangled sound and knocks the chair over in his haste to stand and run. Michael makes no effort to stop him.

(Its laughter follows him all the way to the bathroom.)

Martin stares at himself in the mirror. His cheeks are flushed and he cannot, in the moment, make sense of his own expression. He sets to scrubbing at his arm, where he finds Michael has left him with a mark that’ll have him wearing sweaters if he wants to avoid Melanie’s suggestive comments and questions from any of them.

This one is much too complex to be explained away as a feral cat, his eyes swimming when he looks at it for longer than a second.

_Protection. And a warning._

He also strips out of his jeans, now stained red, and attacks them with cold water and hand soap until they’re the best they’ll be till laundry day.

When he returns to the living room, clad in pyjamas, Michael has moved to its original place in the armchair. The desk chair has been stood back up and pushed backwards against the desk. Martin’s mouth quirks at the effort. He’ll fix it later, when Michael’s not looking. For now he settles on the couch, bringing his composition book along.

Michael says, “Are you upset with me?”

Martin shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” He probably should be, the way it dug into him, but he’s not, and it looks pleased by this answer.

They don’t speak much over the next few hours, Martin adding the occasional line to his poem, feeling Michael’s gaze on him like it’s standing guard, waiting for something to happen.

It’s nearing eleven when Martin stands, his arm still aching slightly, and says, “I’m going to bed.”

Michael makes no move.

“Are you,” Martin glances toward its door and then toward the hallway, “staying here?”

His cheeks pink as it occurs to him that might be construed as an invitation.

“Yes.” Michael evidently hasn’t taken it as one. “Good night, Martin. Sleep well.”

“Good night, Michael,” Martin says, and scurries out of the room before his mouth can run away with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: This was all meant to be part of the last chapter! So I thought, "I'll make it the beginning of chapter 7!" 
> 
> Aaaaaand it decided to be the length of 2 chapters all on its own.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Noticed some issues with the original update, deleted and did it again, sorry if anyone got a double e-mail!)

There’s an unusual smell in the Archive today. 

There is, for the most part, the usual smell of paper and  _wrong_  (which Martin hadn’t realized had a smell until he began working down here, though he ought to have expected it to, as his experience working in research informed him that  _pretentious academia_  has its own smell, and his forays into Artefact Storage were proof aplenty of the smell of  _deeply unpleasant_ ). But every so often he catches a whiff of dirt, too. It reminds him of the birdhouse and he’d much rather stop smelling it, given the choice.

Whenever he squeezes his hand around the place Michael half-mutilated his arm before perceiving it down to something between scab and scar, the smell—this is ridiculous—he would almost say it flees.

“Hey—”

Martin whirls, dropping the book in his hands and wincing at the  _thud_  of contact. It’s only Tim, which shouldn’t be such a shock, but Tim seems less than concerned with the hours they’re meant to be working as of late. The contents of his desk shift sometimes, suggesting he’s certainly  _been_ here, but it’s getting rarer and rarer for that being here to happen at the same time as the rest of them.

“You’re extra jumpy today.” Tim folds his arms over his chest, a sheet of paper dangling from one hand. “I suppose I missed something new and traumatizing?”

“Um.”

 _Please define traumatizing,_  Martin nearly says, and then has to suppress a nervous titter of laughter. It’s a good thing Melanie’s out of the room. She’d probably make some snide remark about ‘poor Martin’s having a spate of experiences with feral cats’ and he’s really happier not getting into it right now. He shakes his head. “No, no, not at all. I didn’t get much sleep last night, had a few nightmares, just—nothing to worry about.”

“Sure,” Tim says, obviously unconvinced. Probably still thinks Elias is to blame, or Jon, or whoever it is Tim is blaming these days.

But Martin hasn’t lied just now.

The nightmares are a jumble, but he knows he has them, knows there was something not a bird in them. Bird _like_. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t any kind of proper bird. There were feathers, and talons, and wings, and a piercing cry reminiscent of an eagle, but—the other sound it made was too much of a rattle, there were too many scales, and the size of the thing… He’d shot upright in bed, shaking, and his first instinct had been to call for Michael, its name sticking in his throat, and he’d felt it there, those eyes watching him. While the rest of his sleep was fitful, he wasn’t worried about danger, and the thing that was not a bird had stayed out of his dreams, or he hadn’t dreamt anymore, and either way, when he rolled out of bed this morning there was no Michael, only the door, and Martin had been relieved— _relieved!_ —to see the cracked yellow paint.

“Sorry.” Martin shakes loose of his thoughts and bends down to retrieve the book. “You were saying—did you need something?”

“Do you know where Leanne Denikin’s statement is, I think it’s 0051701? I don’t see it on the shelf and I’m trying to check it against something.”

“Oh,” Martin says, brightening a bit, because this he can answer. He’d been reviewing the statement himself recently, along with others that made mention of Breekon and Hope (or what sounded like Breekon and Hope, coincidences only stretching so far), and they’re still spread on his desk. He sets his book aside and sorts through the files until he comes to Ms. Denikin’s and offers it to Tim, who looks more than a little confused about why Martin’s got it, but maybe if he bothered to  _be here_  and know what’s going on, the rest of them are trapped too and they’re still—no, no, that’s not fair of him. He can’t begrudge Tim for not coping; he’s not sure whatever it is the rest of them are doing qualifies as coping, either, they just happen to be doing it together, during ordinary work hours. He does his best to sound casual when he asks, “Where were you yesterday?”

Tim gives a noncommittal shrug. “I had better places to be.”

“And those places were…?”

“Not here.”

Martin sighs. “You know, none of us are thrilled with the situation here either, but I thought you and I might still be friends. It feels like just me down here most of the time, Basira and Melanie are fine and all, but I’m pretty sure neither of them like me, and you know how Jo—”

“Stop,” Tim says, and won’t look at him. “I’m not trying to—abandon you, or whatever you think is happening, but I  _can’t_  be down here all the time. No more than I have to.”

Martin knows what he means. Too much time away from the Archive anymore, and it’s…it feels wrong.

“I wasn’t suggesting we hang out in the Archive,” Martin says with a lightness he doesn’t feel. “We can go for a drink sometime?”

Jon’s office door opens and he steps out, frowning down at a slim file in his hand. “Martin,” he says without looking up, “would you mind looking into the birdhouse today?”

Martin feels a twinge of sensation, neither pleasant nor painful, in his forearm. “I guess not. Are you sure you want me to work on that and not the—”

“Evidently Ms. Hendrick called this morning. It would seem she’s more interested in following up on her case than the majority of our witnesses, so I assured Rosie I would put someone on the matter.” Jon finally looks up from his paper and stiffens a fraction. “Tim.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Tim says with something like bright malice, and settles at his desk with Ms. Denikin’s statement. So much for any kind of progress there.

“The birdhouse,” Martin prompts, for the sake of heading off an awkward, tension-filled silence.

“Right.” Jon crosses the room to offer him the file. An attached sticky note reads: Priority, and Martin reads the exhaustion and impatience in Jon’s penmanship. “She gave me the name of the antique dealer who sold it to her. I suggest starting there.”

Martin nods. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

“If you run out of leads,” Jon says, and hesitates, “we can come back to this. It’s not our primary concern.”

Then he disappears back into his office, and Martin retreats behind his desk. The antiques dealer, one Lisette Stone, is local to London, and a quick Google search indicates she’s still got a storefront, hours restricted. He considers saying something more to Tim, but thinks better of it given the look on his face, and busies himself with other work until the dealer opens.

The woman who answers sounds well into old age and pronounces every word so crisply Martin would almost think she’s got the advantage of a script and has rehearsed the conversation. He explains himself: Anna Hendrick (who the dealer remembers fondly as “a charming young thing”), the birdhouse (which she describes as “a very fine piece of craftsmanship”), and the potential oddness (to which she says “no, I never noticed anything strange”). He does leave the Magnus Institute out of it entirely, as Ms. Stone gives the impression of someone far too respectable to have any dealings with them; instead he claims to be with a research project, and ends with, “If you have any information about where it might have come from before it came to you, that might be very helpful to us.”

“I remember very well where that birdhouse came from,” Ms. Stone says, grimness seeping through the speaker; he can practically read her face. More than that, he hears her answer before she’s said it, and fancies for a moment he’s anything like Jon, knowledge placing itself in his head. His arm tingles at the thought, and he glares at the ceiling, though he knows Michael’s not looking just now. “I’m not surprised there’s something funny about it. I purchased it through Mikaele Salesa. I’m sure you haven’t heard of him, but he’s the worst sort of—”

“His name has cropped up once or twice, actually.” Martin’s shoulders slump. Where else would the birdhouse have come from? He may as well have assumed without making the call: evil antique, Mikaele Salesa. Of course he’s not like Jon; it’s just coincidences only stretching so far. Anyway, Jon wouldn’t have liked for him to assume, and here he’s got confirmation of it that can carry along when he bangs his head on the desk after hanging up. There’ll be no tracking it any further, now. He hazards, “He didn’t happen to tell you much of its history?”

Ms. Stone makes a derisive sound, and Martin’s heart would sink if it weren’t already in a pit. “That man,” she says, making  _man_  sound identical to  _bastard_ , “gave me the necessary proof of the item’s age and maker, and had little else to offer me beyond the exorbitant price tag. I don’t recall the maker’s name offhand, but I can dig it up for you.”

Martin doesn’t want to know what Ms. Stone paid for it, even less what she turned around and charged Ms. Hendrick; and now they’ve got it at no charge, goody for them.  _Monstrous antiques, free to a good sucker._ Probably they’ve already got the age and craftsman passed on from Ms. Hendrick. “I believe we have that information, but is it all right to call you back if I’m mistaken?”

“I’m in and out of appointments the rest of the day, but you can e-mail me if you need something,” she says, and rattles off the address almost before he’s groped for a pen.

When the conversation’s over, he doesn’t  _actually_  bang his head on the desk; his head’s gone painful enough and he can just imagine Michael asking him if that’s some odd human behavior or some odd Martin behavior, should it deign to look in on him. He settles for pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes—and there are the gleaming eyes from inside the birdhouse, looking back at him behind his eyelids. The smell follows, rain-soaked earth and something sickly-sweet, and he remembers the thing that wasn’t a bird.

Martin’s arm sears and he sucks air in between his teeth.  _This one is more than spoken for,_  rings in his ears, and then a sound like an angry, beaked thing might make. The smell fades.

Just what the hell did Michael  _do_  to him last night? Is this spot on his arm some sort of supernatural security system? Protection and a warning, and it’s what, scaring off whatever lives inside that birdhouse?

(But the thing in his nightmare was much too large to live there.)

 _Go to Jon, Martin,_  he thinks.  _It’s not complicated. He pulled you aside yesterday in case of trouble, and this is trouble if anything is._

But Jon’s already got trouble enough, and Martin doesn’t want to add to it, and apparently he’s got Michael…looking out for him? God, what’s he even supposed to  _do_  with that?  _Hey Jon, you don’t have to worry about me, actually, because that Michael is going to be keeping other monsters away, and itself awfully close._  His face warms at the thought of just how close it sometimes keeps itself, and how close he sometimes thinks of it being, and he nearly misses when his life was only frightening, not frightening and emotionally confusing.

No, bringing any of it up to Jon can wait a bit longer.

For now he looks through Ms. Hendrick’s intake form, and then makes a trip up to the library to see if they’ve got anything on the man who made the birdhouse, or similar matters. Tim’s disappeared when he comes back to the Archive; he doesn’t imagine he’ll see him again for at least a week. So much for that drink. Michael’s almost become more reliable than Tim Stoker.

Speaking of Michael’s reliability—it isn’t in his armchair when he locks his door behind him, but he hears clinking and rustling from the direction of the kitchen, and wonders what it’s gotten into now.

The answer, he discovers in another moment, is his refrigerator. Michael’s removed nearly everything and left it spread out on the floor, and its head is stuck in the freezer. Martin counts, slowly, to three before clearing his throat, certain Michael already knows he’s there and is feigning having not noticed. It pulls back from the freezer, a package of mixed vegetables in one hand.

Martin frowns at Michael until it says, “Hello, Martin,” and then frowns at it some more.

Squatting to begin shifting jam jars, condiment containers, and a carton of juice nearer the fridge, Martin says, “I know time’s not relevant to you or whatever, but it is to food, so do you want to tell me in  _human_  terms how long you’ve had all of this out?”

Michael looks at the vegetables. “Several minutes?”

“You don’t sound sure of that.”

It leans toward him, musing, “How long did it take me to leave my first mark on you?”

“Erm, I dunno, a few seconds?” Martin says doubtfully. “You can’t have done all of this in a few seconds.”

“You must be right,” it agrees. “And you’ve been gone a number of hours, haven’t you, so it must be somewhere between several seconds and minutes and hours.”

“Oh my god, you—” Martin turns his face away, torn between laughing helplessly and shrieking at it for possibly wasting the entire contents of his fridge. Elias doesn’t pay him well enough to replace it all, never mind paying him well enough to make up for the employee-prisoner business. He takes a moment to say, “Move, please.”

Michael helpfully steps out of the way, and Martin sets to restocking his fridge, occasionally opening things to sniff them. Nothing smells like it needs to be thrown in the bin. It watches him the entire time, and he hears it playing with the bag of vegetables right up until he holds a hand out to take them. It says, “Is this good?” as it hands them over.

“They’re good for me,” he says, and then, “Yeah, I like them. You should really try something sometime, if it wouldn’t—I mean, can you eat this sort of thing?”

“I can,” it says dubiously, “but I have no need of sustenance of this sort.”

“All right,” Martin says, “but counterpoint? Cake is delicious, no, I haven’t got any, sorry, bad example, but tea’s also delicious, which you might have worked out if you ever bothered to drink mine.”

There’s a pause before Michael answers, and Martin would nearly call it uncertain, except he doubts Michael bothers with that sort of thing. “Have I upset you?”

“No more than usual.” Martin catches the displeasure on its face and adds a hasty, “No, Michael, I was joking,” and why’s he worried about if it’s unhappy with his answer? it asked the question! “It’s just things’ll go bad if they’re out of the cold too long, and then I can’t eat them.”

“Ah. Salmonella,” it says sagely, and Martin presses the backs of his fingers to his mouth to cover his laughter.

“Something like that,” he says, and asks, for no good reason he can think of, “If I’d said yes, you had upset me, would that have mattered to you?”

Michael steps in closer, and he takes a step back, his spine meeting the counter. He leans his head back to watch its face, eyes straying to Michael’s mouth, and he’d like to pretend it’s only because it’s opening, but the way his heart is pounding belies that thought. Yes, all  _right_ , he wants to kiss Michael; as he’d prefer not to humiliate himself more than he ever has with it, he suppresses the urge. Its hands land to either side of him, and it says, “Of course it would matter.”

“You can’t say of course,” he says, nearly knocking his head on the cabinetry, “like I’m supposed to have any idea what you’re thinking.”

“Then we’re evenly matched.” There’s something in its eyes he wishes desperately he could read. “I never know what you’re thinking, Martin Blackwood.”

 _Thank god,_  he thinks, having just chased away the image of sucking on a patch of skin at the hollow of its throat.

“Could have fooled me sometimes,” he says.

Michael surprises him by stepping back, tucking curls behind one ear, and smiling at him. “I’ll leave your food alone in the future. I wouldn’t want to upset you.”

Martin says, “Thank you. I’m going to fix dinner now, if you’re wondering what’s on my mind.” There are several other things on his mind as well, as he rummages through the cupboards for a box of pasta, an unopened jar of sauce, and the necessary pots. He’s not going to mention those. Possibly not ever.

Michael keeps him quiet company while he waits for the water to boil, dumps the pasta in and waits again. Once, it picks up the wooden spoon he’s using in the sauce and gives it an experimental stir, and Martin can’t help thinking that’s endearing, even cute, which is—the mind boggles. Soon enough the kitchen smells delicious, Martin’s stomach making an anticipatory sound as he scoops his meal into a bowl; he fully expects Michael to ask for some, but it doesn’t, only sits opposite him at the table.

The meal starts well enough.

Starts, but doesn’t finish.

Martin is two-thirds done with his food and raising another forkful to his mouth when that sweet-rotting dirt smell forces its way up his nose again. He gags and lets the fork clatter into the bowl.  _Oh god._  It’s stronger than before, twisting his stomach. He thinks he may vomit, but it’s only dry heaving. He shoves the rest of his dinner away, holding his breath a moment, and then Michael is at his side, taking hold of his arm and squeezing without cutting.

“Get out,” Michael snarls, and even through the overwhelming smell he has the presence of mind to know it’s addressing something else. “Get out, little wretch, before I—”

Just like that, the smell is gone. Martin breathes in clean, pasta-scented air, but it’s impossible to enjoy with his stomach still rolling.

Michael makes a satisfied sound, and squeezes again. “Martin,” it says, intent on his face, “was everything well today? Did my mark serve its purpose?”

“I…” Martin isn’t sure he knows the answer to this question. “There was the smell, a few times, but when I touched your—mark? It went away. It wasn’t that strong.”

Michael shows its teeth again. “It treads dangerously. I am not known for my mercy.”

“Should it know you?” Martin’s stomach hasn’t settled. “I don’t really know how any of this works.”

“Yes, it should. I’m much older, between us.” Michael makes an amused, dangerous sound, and releases his arm. “Finish your dinner, Martin.”

Martin shakes his head. “No, I think I’m done for the night.”

Michael’s expression shifts from anger to what he thinks might be concern. “ _You_  require this sustenance.”

Martin shakes his head. “I don’t have to eat all of it, and I’ll probably vomit it up again if I try. I’ll just sit another minute and then wash up.”

Michael still looks displeased, and doesn’t move away from him, leaning on the table and making the occasional low sound that genuinely reminds him of an angry cat. It’d make him laugh, another time. Now, he has every intention of taking a moment for his stomach to calm down and then getting up to do the dishes, but the thought alone exhausts him.

“You said you would wash up,” Michael says, and he makes a sound of acknowledgment. “You were referring to your dishes.”

“That’s right,” he says, willing Michael to take the hint in his voice that he’s not up for explaining human household tasks just now.

Michael pushes away from the table so suddenly Martin starts. It picks up his bowl and his eyes follow it to the garbage bin—he opens his mouth to tell it not to chuck the entire bowl, but closes it again when Michael scrapes what’s left of his pasta out and makes its way to the sink. He blinks, like the sight might change, but Michael’s got the tap running, and is collecting the pots from the stove, and it must have seen him wash up enough times, because it’s managing perfectly well. There’s a monster going domestic, scrubbing his dishes, and it’s only stranger than the shower incident because it’s doing it correctly.

Martin blinks several more times, very quickly; he’s not going to  _cry_  about this, how stupid would that be? He finds the energy to stand, ambling over to the sink, to Michael, and he thinks, again, it knows he’s there, but its focus stays on the pot in its hands.

For a moment Martin only stands there, looking at those hands, thinking of the times Michael has lifted them to his face or touched his arms and his skin has so easily split. It has touched him, but he has not touched it, yet. A faint smile graces his lips and he reaches for the back of its hand as it shuts the water off, and he’s fully conscious of how it goes perfectly still.

“Michael,” he says, noting that its skin feels different from his own, somehow less definite, “thank you.”

The monster turns its head to study him, and he wants to touch its face too, but keeps his hand where it is. “I do enjoy when you look at me that way.”

“Yeah,” Martin says. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all, I have 19 pages of notes pertaining to this fic
> 
> 6 of those are under the label "pertaining to smut"


	9. Chapter 9

EDIT 9/8: This chapter was previously a notice of discontinuing the fic. It's obviously come back, but I'm leaving this chapter in place because I don't want to destroy the comments. The story properly continues in the following chapter.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're back! We weren't supposed to be back, but the story wouldn't leave me alone, so.
> 
> I got even more experimental with punctuation and formatting than usual in this chapter. Here's hoping it works!

Martin leaves Michael humming to itself in his living room, tuneless verging on discordant.

“Good night, Martin,” it had said when he mumbled, all dizzy and drifting, that he needed to go lie down, and he’d stood in the hall and watched it settle its long limbs—longer, slenderer, _fractal_ caught from the corner of his eye—onto his armchair, and he’d stifled the mad urge to ask if it wanted to come with him, saying only, “Good night, Michael,” before walking stiffly away.

The trouble is, he considers as he changes into rumpled pyjamas, it’s done his dishes. Michael’s got knives for fingers, blades it’s entirely too fond of cutting into him with (like it’s some sort of demented fortune teller looking for a truth), and it’s _done his dishes_ , and he’d felt something he preferred not to peer too closely at in the moment, and he’s a pathetic coward, but running is easy (what’s the matter with being scared?), and the other option—

It’s _not_ an option. Not really.

Martin crawls beneath his covers in a resigned sort of way, expecting nightmares full of feathers and jagged beaks.

* * *

(But the monster Martin finds in his subconscious lacks in talons or scales, and it would be unfair to call the experience a nightmare.)

(Weight presses him into a mattress too soft to be his own. His fingers run down a black silken sheet. The body on top of his own is fuzzy, not pleasantly so like a cat, but in the tiresome way of a radio signal just out of range. Inconstant.)

(“What do you want?” Michael says, in which he would call a murmur were it anybody else, were it any _body_ instead of any _thing_. And Martin is not alarmed beneath it, only lost in a fog, shaking his head. No breath touches his face, only a rustling of long hair, a skimming of teeth; he shivers.)

(“I don’t know,” Martin says, and a tongue less wet than a tongue should be flicks over his ear.)

(“Shall we find the answer together?” Michael suggests.)

(Sharp fingers run the length of Martin’s suddenly bare torso, feather over his hips and thighs the way a feather-stuffed pillow stabs one’s neck in the night, and the sound he produces hasn’t yet decided if it intends to be a whimper or a moan. His back arches and

* * *

Martin wakes, skin flushed from several sorts of heat. He’s distinctly aware of the one between his legs.

It’s a relief—and not a relief at all—to find his bedroom free of Michael. He wrestles free of the blanket twisted around his legs; he _pointedly_ ignores the lingering erection, the urge to close a fist over himself and think of Michael. Focuses on the least sexually appealing things he can, not the least of which is the significantly lumpier mattress beneath him, the sweat soaked through his pyjamas.

But he’s _not_ going to bring himself off thinking of Michael.

He _isn’t_.

“I might have preferred the nightmares,” he mumbles (the lie), blinking at the clock. He’d have gotten up soon anyway, may as well get it done. First, though.

“Michael?” he calls, to make sure his flat is well and truly empty.

He doesn’t want it to answer. Doesn’t want it to appear and reach for him. He doesn’t he doesn’t he doesn’t; he does.

Silence, relief—“Michael?” he tries again, has to be _sure_ as he can be—no Michael, disappointment burning in his belly.

That’s that, then.

Martin takes a moment to collect his breathing. He hauls himself out of bed and into the bathroom, where he runs the water cold until his body takes the hint. His teeth chatter with it.

There’s a lingering chill when he finally steps out of the shower,  though he turned the water hot midway through. (He mutters, “Sorry,” to his own untouched, unsatisfied anatomy.) Tea ought to take care of that. He wraps his towel about his hips and, thinking no more of it than he ever has, living alone, makes for the kitchen.

Freezes on its threshold.

Michael sits at the kitchen table. Its hands are folded loosely together, and at the sight of him its mouth pulls ( _pulls_ , an unnatural thing) into its rendition of a smile, and Martin’s heart does unruly things that are likely to send him to the hospital, if it carries on for long. It says, “Good morning, Martin.”

“G-good morning,” he says, and nearly scowls at his own stammer. “I didn’t think you would be here.”

It’s the truth as much as it’s a lie, and a lie as much as it’s the truth. He always expects Michael; he never expects Michael.

“Here I am.” Michael spreads its hands as though to make its point. Its eyes are drifting from his face, lower and still lower, and his cheeks flame despite the towel. It can’t see, can it?

(Who’s he kidding? What’s a worn bit of fabric going to do, if it wants to look?)

(Does it want to look?)

Michael extends one of those hands in his direction, waggles its fingers in a clear _come hither, now_ , and Martin doesn’t hesitate. Somewhere awfully far away there’s the thought that he _should_. Hesitate, that is. He shouldn’t be so easily summoned by a monster’s sharp edges, but he’s already in front of Michael and it’s already stood to meet him, looming the way it does.

Martin thinks he should have known it would show up. Thinks he sort of did know, if he’s honest with himself. Thinks he sort of wanted it to. More than sort of. There’s a low coil of shame. Michael is—he hasn’t got a word for what Michael is, now. Probably he’d be a better poet if he had, but (then again) maybe not. He’d challenge any poet to find the words to pin Michael down when the whole point is that it _isn’t_ —

It hasn’t said anything more, only spent a long moment staring at him in a way that makes him fidget. The silence is bearable until it’s not.

“Did you stop me from having nightmares last night?” he asks, which isn’t entirely the question he’d found written on his lips. _Did you do that?_

“No,” Michael says slowly, “dreams are not my preferred purview, but if you have need of manipulation—” Martin pretends with all his might that Michael’s careful pronunciation of _manipulation_ hasn’t made his traitorous cock twitch with renewed interest “—I can provide.”

Martin has to look away from it, at that. At the help it offers him so naturally, when it feels like only a few days ago he’d been convinced it was there to kill him. It was there to kill him, once; he still doesn’t know what changed its mind.

“Why do you ask, Martin?”

“I was just wondering.” Martin wouldn’t believe himself, a tone as unconvincing as his. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hmmm.” Michael draws the sound out longer than can possibly be necessary. He’s still looking away when he feels it lean toward him. Its nose brushes along his ear and it _breathes_ and for heaven’s sake—probably not heaven in its case, only the other options have fled his mind—it’s _sniffing_ him again, isn’t it?

“Michael—”

“Martin,” it says, the softest murmur against the skin of Martin’s neck, just above his collarbone.

“What are you doi—”

Its tongue swipes out to lap at a drop of water on his throat and his voice fails him. Michael laughs and straightens; Michael laughs, and looms.

Martin does his best to stand taller and makes a valiant attempt at brisk. “Before,” he says, valiant yet failed, “you said something about a smell, or something on me?”

The laugh fades and Michael’s mouth thins. “Yes. It’s gotten stronger, today.”

Martin winces. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“You will be fine, Martin Blackwood,” Michael says, so calmly he wants to believe it, but prior experience makes it difficult, “if this creature of decay knows what’s good for it.”

“Right,” Martin says. _And if it doesn’t?_ “You also said I was, er, more than taken? And I know you weren’t talking to _me_ , you were talking to someone else—something else, I dunno, but I don’t know what you meant, and I have been wondering?”

“There’s your master.” Michael’s voice drops unhappily. “And then there’s me.”

“There you go mentioning my master again.” Martin frowns up at it. “I still don’t understand.”

“The Eye,” Michael says, edged with disdain. “The Watcher collecting dust and fear and blood and bone and _you_ in its temple. Recording, serving, feeding.” Its eyes narrow. “Belonging. You belong to it.”

Martin’s voice rises in sharp contrast to Michael’s. “Who decided that?”

“You didn’t?” He thinks he’s startled it.

“No!” His breathing grows more rapid. _You belong to it. You belong to it. You belong to it._ All he’d wanted was to care for his mother and so all he’d wanted was a job and then all he’d wanted was to follow Jon and which part was the mistake? “I never—I didn’t want—I didn’t volunteer to serve any monsters—I can’t have—”

“The Eye would have to trick its servants into service,” Michael says, sounding almost amused again; but then it looks at him, and something like aggravation flickers over its face, and it nearly softens. “Martin. Tell me what you need.”

Martin forces himself to take a steadying breath. To focus. “All right. All right, not going to get that settled now, I suppose, so…you? The Eye and you?”

Michael allows his evasion. “I have no claim but what you allow me.”

“I don’t know what that means, either,” Martin says like a confession, an admission of guilt. (An apology.)

Michael lifts a hand and Martin follows its progress, the way two fingers settle on his collarbone, the way they part his skin, glide through him as easily as if he were made of butter, and swipe back up through the thin trickle of blood. It sounds, dare he think it, almost reverent. “This is my claim.”

“That makes six,” he says without thinking.

“What?” Michael’s fingers still, inside him.

Martin’s face burns. “Times you’ve…”

Michael smiles, brilliant and painful. “You’ve been counting?”

“No!” Martin says, stepping away from it and turning, hoping to hang onto a scrap or two of his dignity. (It’s much too late for that, of course.) “I’m not _counting_ , it’s just memorable.”

Michael moves with that unnatural speed, coils a hand around his wrist, harmlessly now, and pulls Martin to face it. There’s an intensity in its eyes. “Do keep counting. Please.”

“Um.” Martin swallows. He can’t think with it looking at him, not like _that_. He throws a desperate look toward his cupboards, in need of a rescue, and blurts, “D’you want tea? I want tea. I’m going to fix some tea.”

Michael frees him and how he wishes he could read its face, could know if there’s something teasing behind that smile or if there’s _anything_ behind it. He’s lost his footing. (Silly, to think he ever had it. To think being with—near, around, not with—Michael is anything but navigating a slippery hill in the dark.) Ceramic clinks as he rifles through his cabinets for cups, a plate for his own breakfast, and he feels Michael still behind him, so he says, “I hope you intend to do something about this cut.”

The monster behind him approaches with an easy gait, and Martin is not afraid.

* * *

The week’s remainder passes poorly, but not, Martin supposes, more poorly than any other.

Jon is out of the office more than he’s in, chasing additional leads with Daisy, who looks at Martin like he’s something to be wiped off her shoes even when her arm’s hanging crooked from its socket. There’s no sign at all of Tim, though Martin suspects he’s responsible for the “sorry,” he finds scrawled on a loose sheet of paper, left atop his desk with a lovely assortment of tea and biscuits, as though that might make up for his extended absence; Martin takes the lot home, and shares the tea with Michael, insomuch as giving it tea to waste is sharing.

An ordinary sort of poor. Except,

Martin has nightmares; and Martin has things that are not nightmares, that wake him blushing and stubborn and in something that isn’t denial, quite, and unable to meet Michael’s eyes.

An ordinary sort of poor. Except,

It’s Wednesday afternoon that Basira returns from the library and wrinkles her nose. Asks, “Did someone track mud in here? I didn’t think it was raining today.”

The smell, sodden earth and something cloying-sweet, which Martin has been successfully ignoring, threatens to consume him, then, and he presses his fingers hard to Michael’s mark. The smell retreats; it doesn’t _go_ , remains in a peripheral space to be caught when he turns his head a certain way.

An ordinary sort of poor. Except,

It’s Thursday morning that he half-dozes in his chair and wakes to the sound of birds. They’re wrong though, scratchy and painful. He glances at Melanie and says a not-very-hopeful, “Are you playing something?”

She gives him a quizzical look. “Sorry?”

“Never mind,” he says glumly. The ward on his skin does nothing to chase away the slimy, rotted birdsong.

An ordinary sort of poor. Except,

It’s not _entirely_ poor.

Martin researches the circus, and Martin researches the birdhouse, and it’s all fruitless; and Martin comes home to Michael.

He gets used to it; rather, he’s _gotten_ used to it. To Michael, though he shouldn’t. He _knows_ he shouldn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to know he shouldn’t be comfortable with the monster sat in his living room. He certainly shouldn’t like it, look forward to it. But it’s nice coming home to somebody, even if that somebody insists they’re not a who, and is a monster sprawled across his armchair. (He does wish it would take more care not to slice his belongings to ribbons. Several poetry collections languish in need of replacing now.)

But Michael is there, and Martin has never had somebody there before.

It studies his face when he arrives home, and it runs its thumb over its mark; and it is there.

* * *

“Should I come in tomorrow?”

Martin poses the question late Friday afternoon as he sets a cup of tea in front of Jon, who himself is scowling at a note from Elias.

“What for?” Jon sets the note to the side and looks instead to Martin, who can’t help noticing how very wan he’s gone, how very haggard.

“I dunno.” Martin shrugs, self-conscious as ever under Jon’s gaze; he might be exhausted, but Martin still feels the weight behind him. “You’re always here, and I thought—the end of the world isn’t going to wait, the circus probably isn’t leaving early on Fridays and going on weekend holidays. I don’t have anything better to do.”

Jon winces. Martin chooses not to read into it overmuch. “No, Martin, but thank you. I would prefer you take what chance you have to rest.”

“Have you thought of taking your own advice?”

At this, Jon gives him a strained smile, and his heart jumps. “I don’t have a chance. I’m too much of this.”

“Oh.” Martin hasn’t a clue how to respond to that. Jon, maybe a monster. Jon, bound tight to the Eye. To their master. How much does he _know_? Martin can’t bring himself to ask, afraid of the answer. (Surely Jon volunteered no more than the rest of them. It’s Elias’ doing, through and through.) He lingers another moment, absently tidying the desk that’s gotten wildly out of hand of late. “Suppose if there’s nothing else I’ll head home, then?”

_Ask me to stay. Just ask. I will._

But Jon is shaking his head and already reaching for something else, some folder of newspaper clippings, saying, “Have a nice weekend, Martin,” and there’s not much to do but leave.

The living room is empty when he reaches his flat. Not _empty_. The yellow door continues to stand sentinel in the wall. There’s a spider idling nearer the kitchen’s entry, legs long and spindly; he gives it a mild look and an absent, “Hullo, George,” on his way past. It probably isn’t any of the same spiders he’s seen about his flat before; he calls them all George.

He raises his voice on a testing, prodding, “Michael?” and there’s nothing, not so much as an answering _rustle_ from deeper in his flat to suggest it’s in another room.

He wonders, as he rifles through his fridge, where Michael is; he wonders if he really wants to know. It wasn’t in the armchair, and it hasn’t answered his call, and he supposes this is another reason not to get used to it: it isn’t always there. It won’t always be. It will lose interest, eventually, and he’ll be on his own again, the way he always has.

Dinner is quick without company. There’s still no sign of Michael when he’s finished washing up.

Except he returns to the living room, and there it is. The monster stands just outside the kitchen, one long-fingered hand at its mouth. And that mouth is working, _chewing_ , and there’s a thin, dark leg peeking out between its lips when it says, “Hello, Martin.”

“ _Are you eating George?_ ” Martin says, horrified.

Michael gives him a blank look. It swallows. “George?”

“Oh my god.” Martin checks the wall, unnecessarily. “Don’t do that! It wasn’t hurting anything, I didn’t mind it being there!”

“It’s a spider,” Michael says, in a pleasant tone that suggests that ought to clear things right up.

“I know,” Martin huffs. “And they eat other insects I might not want here, so they’re fine—”

Something odd passes over Michael’s face. Well. Everything that passes over Michael’s face is odd, comes with the territory, but this is—odder. Than usual. A flicker of impatience and consternation and a flash of teeth, and it nearly huffs right back at him. “It doesn’t belong here,” it says crossly. “It is not easy to protect you when you _offer_ yourself, when you _invite_ others into yourself.”

Martin hasn’t got the energy to parse that. “It’s my flat,” he snaps, “and I didn’t invite you in, did I?” and marches across the room. He refuses to look, to check that Michael’s still there—he hasn’t heard the creak of its door—while he fetches his poetry journal and settles with it on the couch.

He’s only been sitting there for a moment when the couch sinks under Michael’s weight alongside. “You’re upset.”

Martin says nothing.

“ _I_ have upset you.”

“No,” Martin says, and, “Yes,” and a sigh. “I don’t know? I’m tired and I’m worried and I’m scared, and I don’t always know what to do with you.”

(This is an understatement. Never mind always, Martin has never once known what to do with Michael.)

For a long-ticking minute, Michael doesn’t reply. Eventually it says, “I apologize for upsetting you,” and its weight shits, and Martin’s reached for it before he can think better—before he can _think_ at all.

“Don’t leave?” It comes out quiet, comes out almost a plea.

“If you prefer I stay.”

Michael sits, again.

Michael sits—closer. The soft green fabric of its sweater presses against his arm. Martin somehow manages to focus on the incomplete poem in his lap. Strangely, he doesn’t mind Michael reading over his shoulder. Maybe it helps, that it isn’t human, neither knows nor cares to judge his words.

“I do,” he says, too late to really count as a _reply_ , but Michael only ‘hmmm?’s at him. “Prefer you stay.”

Michael blinks at him, the long, slow blink of a cat. “Then I am at your service.”

_Oh._

Martin tries to pretend that hasn’t rendered him useless.

“What are you scared of?” Michael asks, when it’s become clear Martin’s blind grasping for words is fruitless, and this gives him something specific to reach for.

“What aren’t I scared of?” Martin laughs, cracked and nearer a sob. “Right now I suppose it’s mostly—what if it’s not enough? What if the thing you smelled on me doesn’t _care_ about your mark or your threats and it—what if this is the thing that kills me?”

“No.” Michael shakes its head decisively.

“That’s it?” Martin laughs again, incredulity seeping its way through this one. “No?”

“No,” Michael repeats. “I will not allow it to take you.”

“Promise?” Martin forces some small part of a smile, means to ease the tension, but Michael’s tone is soft, dangerous silk.

“I promise, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin swallows. He wants to pretend it’s nothing, and doesn’t want to seem ungrateful, though he doubts it matters to Michael. His hand darts out to squeeze Michael’s arm, and then returns to wrap around his pen. He stares at his page, because it’s easier. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Michael says. A beat, and then, “You intended to work on your poetry.”

“I did, yeah.”

“And now?”

Martin chances a look at it. “Suppose I still do.”

It’s difficult to estimate how long they sit together in full silence, save the scratching of Martin’s pencil, before one of Michael’s hands drifts onto Martin’s arm. The initial contact makes him shiver. Its thumb is the first thing to move, just one little brush over his skin. He ignores this well enough.

Except, Michael doesn’t stop. Its thumb draws what feels like a circle, _circles_ , in and in and in, spiraling (until maybe it’s out, after all) and Martin doesn’t look. He feels it, when a second finger joins the thumb, a third. The way they drag over his skin, sometimes knives and sometimes not, stroking over and through his skin.

(Martin wants to squirm. He settles for letting his toes curl, for tightening his fingers around his pencil till he thinks it might snap, for swallowing too hard.)

(Sometimes, sometimes, when a finger flicks right or wrong, he’s got to swallow a moan.)

(Has to swallow a “please,” once.)

(But his breathing remains steady. That’s something to be proud of, he supposes.)

(Is there anything to be proud of, when you’ve gotten yourself into this situation? And what _is_ this situation, anyway?)

Eventually, when Michael’s fingers are skimming in ways that suggest his skin’s gone _slippery_ , Martin decides he really ought to look. If only to tell Michael to _knock that off, please._ (Please.) He steels himself for a wreck. It isn’t, and it is, and his eyes dance away, flick up at Michael’s face

(and its eyes are on him, waiting for a reaction)

and back down to his arm

(“Martin,” it says)

where the shape it’s drawn makes no sense, doesn’t align with any sort of geometric rules anybody ever taught him, twists and writhes and starbursts in every unreasonable way.

Martin wonders if he’s getting too used to the sight of his own blood. But he wonders it far away, and then wonders if he’s getting too used to all of this.

“What is that?” he asks, neverminding the amount of red leaking onto the denim of Michael’s trousers.

“Can’t you tell?” Michael sounds surprised, or hurt, both or neither, and Martin feels a flash of guilt when he shakes his head. “It’s me, as much as there is a me.”

“Ah.” Martin tilts his head, dizzied eyes flitting from his arm to Michael’s face, lovely as ever, and back. “Right, sure, I see the resemblance now. Dunno how I missed it.”

“You’re making a joke,” Michael says, surprised. Two of its fingers, wet and warm with his blood, press beneath his chin, _stinging_ , and (please, Michael) it studies his face. “This is what I am meant to be, Martin. I am more than Michael.”

Martin casts through his head for the correct words to use; he doesn’t think they’re there, though, replaced with Michael and that twisting work on his arm, which is evidently the same. There’s only Michael. _But I like Michael._ He manages only a lame, “Oh.”

But this seems to satisfy it. “Yes,” it says, its thumb trailing just beneath his lip, and he could easily—he catches himself, because that thumb is sharp and bloodied, and it echoes his, “Oh.”

“There’s sort of blood everywhere,” Martin points out then, because it’s safe. Also, because his arm hurts like he’s gotten improperly creative with a pair of scissors.

“Would you like me to clean up my mess?” Michael’s tone is never _trustworthy_ , but it is less so than ever now.

“Yes.” Martin nods, and then remembers, and— “Only, don’t lick it!”

“Why not?” There’s amusement there that makes Martin flush.

“Because it’s disgusting,” Martin says, sure his tone must betray him. _Because I’m afraid I’ll get hard. I’m afraid you’ll notice._ Afraid, as ever.

“Is it?” Michael laughs. “Then I suppose I’ll have to restrain myself.”

Martin sucks in a breath at that—or he doesn’t breathe—he’s not sure which is true. Neither is his preferred reaction. But Michael doesn’t comment; it runs its fingers up his arm and the mess is no longer, except for where the blood’s soaked into Michael’s jeans.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. “I think I’m going to turn in early.”

He’s not sure he can handle sitting here with it for much longer tonight.

“Would you still like me to stay?” Michael asks.

“No,” Martin says, too hastily.

(He wants—)

(Nothing he can have, obviously.)

(Just another day, then, isn't it.)

“I just mean, I’ll be all right.” It makes no mention of his fear, though he’s sure it tastes it still, thick in the air, undoubtedly mingling with several other things he hopes it _can’t_ taste. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

Michael looks at him for a long time before it nods. “I will see you tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

Michael only laughs again, and says, “Good night, Martin,” and is gone.

Martin lingers briefly on the couch, curling his fingers over the place it marked and unmarked. There’s a bit of blood on his leg. Eventually, he supposes, he might run out of skin that hasn’t yet experienced Michael’s treatment. Oh, but then it would have to touch him—he shoots to his feet and strides purposefully to the kitchen before that thought can run its full course.

“A cup of tea to sooth your nerves,” he tells himself in as stern a tone as he can muster (that is to say, not at all), “and then you’re off to bed.”

He doesn’t pay much attention as he fixes his drink, could probably go through the motions in his sleep at this point. The first sip burns in a good, distracting way. Several sips on, he’s managed to discard the image of Michael on top of him, lips sliding down his throat. On the next, he feels a cool slither against his mouth.

Freezes.

Of its own very much appreciated accord, his hand lowers from his face, and his eyes follow, and there: the tea ripples.

And there: the shape of a worm surfaces, thick and brown and rolling and nothing like Prentiss’.

Martin shouts, which sounds less cowardly than yelps, which is closer to what he actually does, and flings the cup away.

It shatters against a cupboard, spraying tea and shards of ceramic alike. He flinches, expecting the worm to fly free.

Nothing. There’s nothing. Martin hesitates, but leans forward to better survey the damage. No worm.

“I imagined it,” he says miserably, knowing full well he didn’t. When’s the last time any of the horror was in his imagination? He lets his weight fall against the counter behind him, wishing he’d asked Michael to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be 3k. _stares into the abyss_
> 
> If you've any interest in seeing what's up with my original work (very queer fantasy novels in which people do tend to make out with things they probably shouldn't), you're welcome to find me on Twitter. [This tweet](https://twitter.com/arianna_emery/status/1133765190091075589) is the event that led me to discontinue my fics to begin with, due to a lack of time.


End file.
